“Tell those great-grandbabies of mine that I heard them loud and clear,” Tom told Linda, “and that I will give Uncle George a hug from each of them the moment he is awake enough to receive one.”
“He says he heard you,” Linda relayed to the back seat, and Tom heard a small chorus of relief.
“Linda,” Tom said, “how are you holding up?”
There was a small pause.
“I’m all right, Tom,” Linda said. “I’d be more all right if I were already there. The drive feels longer than usual this time.”
“I know it does,” Tom said. “But you’ll be here soon. And until then, I’m sitting right where I am, and I’m not going to move from this waiting room until you come through those doors.”
“Thank you, Tom.” Linda’s voice caught, just slightly. “I don’t know what we’d do without you.”
“Of course, sweetheart. George is my family too,” Tom told her quietly. “Now you concentrate on the road. I’ll see you soon.”
“I’ll see you soon, Tom,” Linda said and ended the call.
Tom set the phone back down, and this time he let himself sit back fully against the chair. The plastic dug into his back the way it had been digging in all afternoon, and he found that he no longer minded.
The double doors at the end of the waiting room remained closed. The young couple by the window was still holding hands. The older gentleman with the crossword had set his pen down and was leaning back with his eyes closed. The nurse with the clipboard had not come through again. Outside, the gold light over the parking lot had begun to lengthen toward evening.
Tom watched the doors and waited. He was alone in the room, and yet he was not alone in the way he had been at the start of the afternoon. Linda was on her way. Maggie was on her way. Michael would come as soon as he could. Lila was holding the bakery for him. Rosa was sitting upstairs in the penthouse with Buddy, keeping watch over an empty home until somebody from the family came back to fill it. The Heart family, scattered across years and miles and decades of quiet drift, was gathering itself back into one place.
Tom closed his eyes for a moment and let that feeling settle through him. Whatever the surgeon walked through those doors to tell him, none of them were going to face it alone. Not George. Not Linda. Not Tom himself.
He was still sitting that way, eyes closed, hands resting loosely on his knees, when the cold paper cup on the side table caught the last of the afternoon light through the window and threw a small, soft pattern across the linoleum floor at his feet.
He didn’t see it. But he felt, somehow, the slow and certain warmth of Sweet Blossom Bay reaching him even here, even in this fluorescent-lit room three miles from the water. Its comforting lull drew him on a whispered promise that his family was coming home and everything was going to be okay. He just knew, deep in his heart, that something about this summer was about to change their lives forever.
LINDA
Linda drove the last stretch toward Sanibel with both hands on the wheel and her eyes fixed on the road ahead, as if holding the car perfectly straight could somehow keep the rest of her life from tilting any further off its axis than it already had.
The light over the gulf had gone gold and long. A late afternoon kind of gold, the kind that softened everything it touched and made even the highway signs look a little kinder. Under different circumstances, Linda might have rolled down the window and let the warm Florida air wash over her face the way she always used to on this stretch. Today, she kept the windows up and the air conditioning low, and listened to the small, anxious quiet that had settled in the back seat about thirty miles ago.
Sophia and Jake had been chattering on and off for most of the drive, the way kids did, but the closer they’d gotten to Sanibel, the more their voices had thinned out. Now, Sophia was looking out the side window with one hand resting on Jake’s knee, and Jake was leaning his head against his sister’s shoulder with his eyes half closed. Linda watched them in the rear-view mirror and felt her heart squeeze. They had been so good the entire trip.
Linda hadn’t been back home to Sweet Blossom Bay in over a year. It just hadn’t been possible as she’d been trying to sort out the mess her life had become. Getting over the divorce. The house had gone on the market. The conversations with Richard’s lawyers had eaten up evening after evening, and somehow the soonest she’d planned to come back had become some vague point on a calendar that kept moving further away. She’d told herself there was time. She’d told herself Uncle George had Tom and Maggie nearby, and Buddy, and the steady rhythm of his hotel and his town. She’d told herself she’d come for the summer, but then she couldn’t, when she realized she needed to find a job. As the ex-husband had not only made poor investments but also played with them using her savings. Linda had barely broken even, selling the house and what little money she had left had to last until she was earning again. And here she was, coming for the summer, but not the way she’d ever wanted to.
Linda swallowed the lump that had risen in her throat and squared her shoulders against it. There would be time later for guilt. Right now there was only the road, and the bay shimmering out beyond the trees, and the small, steady weight of two grandchildren who were watching her for cues on how scared they were allowed to be.
The causeway came into view at last, that long stretch of road that lifted up over the water and carried a person from the mainland onto Sanibel Island. Linda felt the small, involuntary lift in her chest that she’d felt every single time she’d crossed it since she was a girl.
“Gran, are we almost there?” Sophia asked softly from the back.
“Almost, sweetheart,” Linda answered. “We’re crossing onto the island now.”
Linda met her eyes briefly in the rear-view mirror. “I know it’s been a lot of traveling today.” She smiled. “We’ll stop by the hospital first, and then we’ll get the two of you a pizza for supper on the way to Heart House, where Rosa will be waiting.”
“Are you going to go back to the hospital?” Jake asked.
“Yes, I need to be there for the first night,” Linda explained. “You know how Uncle George hates hospitals? Well, he hates them even more when he’s the patient.”
The kids had a laugh at that.
“I can’t imagine Uncle George ever being in a hospital,” Sophia admitted. “He is the healthiest, most active person I know.” Her eyes widened. “And my parents are very, very active with their jobs and lifestyle.”
“Yes, Uncle George is in extremely good shape for his age,” Linda agreed. “That’s why this fall and his hip are going to make him a little grumpy.”
