Page 112

I had to muscle down the lump in my throat.

No. I wasn’t ready to go home. But I’d have to.

We said good-bye to everyone and started the walk back.

Before we left, Daniel had walked me around the VFW, showing me the yellowing articles framed on the walls with stories of his family’s contributions to the town. There was the Spanish flu save and the Prohibition story he’d already told me about. Then there was a newspaper clipping, printed by the Wakan Gazette, about Daniel’s great-grandfather John, who started a human chain to lead children out of the schoolhouse to safety during the deadly 1940 Armistice Day Blizzard. His wife, Helen Grant, used the Grant House’s large wood-fired oven and baked off a hundred loaves of bread and sent it with her husband via sleigh along with medical supplies and firewood to every house in town. Neither of them slept for three days. Survivors recounted tears of joy as John arrived with the care packages. Wakan didn’t lose one person.

There was an article about Daniel’s grandfather William, who came to the rescue in 1975 when a fast-moving wildfire threatened to burn down the town. He coordinated a response team and worked through the night to create a firebreak that saved the town before the blaze reached Wakan. Linda, Daniel’s grandmother, took charge of the evacuation efforts and ensured everyone made it to safety. The Grants were the last people to leave.

After the F2 tornado of 1991, William and Linda Grant set up a generator and a soup kitchen in the VFW to make sure everyone was fed during the cleanup. Then they advocated and won when the county wanted to divert the highway in a move that would have decimated the summer tourism. They kept the town clean and proud and safe. They were Wakan’s first and last line of defense, in all things.

There was story after story.

The Grants were groundskeepers, I realized. Humble royalty. They tended to Wakan and its people with the same care that Daniel tended his garden and his house. It was bred into him, like medicine was bred into me. His kingdom was smaller and his legacy was different, but he was tied to his birthright just like I was tied to mine.

It was funny to think that for the last hundred and twenty-five years our two families had existed at the same time, doing the same things they were doing now. The Grants gave their lives to Wakan and the Montgomerys gave theirs to Royaume.

I bet abandoning his calling never once crossed Daniel’s mind.

I felt guilty wishing I wasn’t who I was. I knew the importance of the Montgomery legacy. I knew what I could do with it, how many people it saved, and how much difference it made in the lives of those it served. But I wished it wasn’t mine. I wished it belonged to someone who knew how to use it. I didn’t, and so I couldn’t honor it the way I knew I should.

Everyone would be waiting for me to become something exceptional, do something huge, make my mark. And I had no idea how.

I had a feeling I never would.

“Hey, you want to see something?” Daniel asked, breaking into my thoughts.

“Sure.”

We cut through the park next to the river and stopped at a statue of a man in the middle of the square. Daniel nodded up to it. “This is my great-great-great-grandfather. He founded the town.”

I looked up at the regal bronze figure. The plaque under it said JOSEPH GRANT.

The resemblance to Daniel was eerily strong. The same kind eyes and steady gaze.

Daniel stood there, peering up at it, and I studied the side of his face.

Daniel had to be here when the town needed him. Eventually, he would be needed, just like all the Grants before him. Because hardship was inevitable, and nobody cared more for Wakan than this family. That’s why they’d always risen to the occasion. And that’s why one always had to be here.

He had to be here. And he had to be in that house.

I knew in my soul that’s part of what gave him strength to do what he had to do. A Montgomery working in any other hospital would still be a Montgomery, but it weakened us, made our influence thinner. I had to be at Royaume, and he had to be within Grant House.

I was talking before I even had a chance to think about what I was saying. “If you need the money, I can loan it to you,” I said.

He turned to me and drew his brows down. “What?”

“The fifty thousand dollars. I can loan it to you.”

He blinked at me. “You have that kind of money?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yeah. I do.”

And it wouldn’t be a loan. It would be a gift. A parting gift.

If he knew I didn’t want it back, he wouldn’t accept it. He was too honorable. But I wanted to do this for him.

Maybe this was the reason I’d driven through this town all those weeks ago. The reason a raccoon ran my car off the road and a handsome stranger had rescued me. Maybe Popeye was right about the town getting what it needed. And it needed Daniel. I couldn’t stand to see him lose his castle, and I could make sure he didn’t. I was probably the only person here who could.