Page 97

“It might be possible,” she said carefully. “The patio doors are wide enough that we could move the bed.”

“Is it safe to move him?” Mac asked.

Kelsey considered the question. “Safe isn’t the right question at this point,” she said gently. “It’s what he wants. And we can switch him to portable oxygen.”

Decision made, Mac rose with purpose. “Let’s do it, then.”

The logistics proved challenging but not impossible. Mac disconnected the bed from the wall, while Kelsey secured the oxygen tank to the mobile stand. Together, they carefully maneuvered the bed toward the French doors that opened onto the deck, inch by painstaking inch.

“Tight fit,” Mac muttered as they angled the bed through the doorway and the frame scraped slightly against the wood.

“Almost there,” Kelsey encouraged, guiding the oxygen tubing to ensure it didn’t tangle in the wheels.

With a final push, they managed to position the bed on the broad wooden deck. The night had turned unseasonably warm for late spring, and the air carried just enough chill to feel fresh without being uncomfortable. Above them, a full moon hung suspended in a cloudless sky, casting silver light across the water below.

Truman’s face seemed to transform as he looked up at the vast expanse of stars. His breathing deepened slightly, as if the sea air itself was infusing him with momentary strength.

“Beautiful,” he murmured. He looked from the moon to the dark silhouettes of pine trees at the property’s edge, to the silver-tipped waves breaking against the rocks below.

Mac pulled up a chair beside the bed. Kelsey checked the oxygen flow once more before joining him, and the three of them existed together in a moment of peace.

“Eleanor and I,” Truman said suddenly, “watched a meteor shower from this very spot. 1958. The year before we married.”

Mac leaned forward to capture this unexpected gift of memory. “You never told me that story.”

“Didn’t I?” Truman’s eyes remained fixed on the night sky. “She wore a blue dress. Had a thermos of coffee laced with whiskey.” A smile touched his lips. “Proposed to her that night. Couldn’t help myself. She outshone the stars.”

Kelsey’s throat tightened at the simple poetry of his words, at the love still evident in his voice after so many decades.

They sat in companionable silence for a while longer, the rhythm of the waves below creating a soothing counterpoint to the night’s stillness. The moon climbed higher, and its light turned the bay into a mirror of quicksilver.

“Look.” Truman’s gaze was fixed on the vast sky above. “Up there.”

Mac and Kelsey lifted their eyes to the star-studded darkness. Just as they did, a bright streak of light cut across the night—a falling star, brilliant and ephemeral, trailing silver across the black canvas before disappearing.

“A shooting star,” Mac said, wonder momentarily displacing grief in his voice. “Did you see it, Grandad?”

Kelsey turned back to the bed. A sense of foreknowledge had already settled in her chest. In that brief moment, while their eyes had been lifted to the heavens, watching the falling star trace its arc across the sky, Truman had slipped away.

He lay peacefully, eyes closed as if in sleep. But the labored rise and fall of his chest had ceased.

Mac made a small, broken sound as he moved swiftly to the bedside. His hand found his grandfather’s, still warm but utterly still beneath his touch.

Kelsey was slower. She checked for a pulse out of professional habit, though she expected none. The stillness beneath her fingertips was final, unequivocal.

“He’s at peace, Mac,” she said softly, resting her hand on Mac’s shoulder. “It was a good death. Gentle. On his own terms.”

Mac nodded, unable to speak. His shoulders shook slightly beneath her touch as he bent over his grandfather’s hand and pressed it to his forehead in a gesture of profound grief and love.

Around them, the night continued its ancient rhythms, the waves breaking on the rocks below, the moon tracing its arc across the star-filled sky, the world breathing in and out as it had done since time began.

Inside this small circle of moonlight, a life had ended. But something of Truman remained in the love that had gathered his family around him, in the peace that now settled over his features.

Kelsey stood beside Mac, her hand steady on his shoulder as he grieved.

Beyond the railing, the bay stretched away toward the distant horizon, carrying the whispered promise of life flowing onward.

Chapter 27