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Nora bent down, putting her hands on her knees. “Yourgreat grandmother.”
Maddie giggled. “Gigi can’t make a website. She told me the only web she knows about is the one growing over her hooha.” My daughter looked at me. “I almost forgot. Daddy, what’s a hooha? I asked Gigi, but she said to ask you because you couldn’t wait to tell me.”
I groaned, and Nora looked exceedingly amused. But she stood and held out her hand. “How about I show you my website and then you can show me yours?”
Maddie beamed. “Okay!”
I watched the two of them walk back into the house hand in hand. I must’ve had a little indigestion again, because I found myself rubbing at an ache just below my breastbone.
Don’t even go there, Cross.
She wants a relationship even less than you do.
Plus, she was a pain in my ass. We bickered all the time. Though shutting her up by sticking something in her mouth was one of my favorite pastimes.
I stole one last glance at Nora and Maddie, now sitting together on the couch, and forced myself to turn away.
A half hour later, we were all sitting at the dining room table eating lunch. I’d cooked way too much food, but at least everyone seemed hungry.
“Daddy, Gigi is friends with a woman named Mad Dog!” Her eyes were filled with delight.
“I know.”
“She wrote on her wall.”
I looked at Nora for a translation.
“My blog,” she explained. “There’s an area where people can leave notes and comments next to each video. Louise has become somewhat of a celebrity.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, when I first started the site, right before our trip, I had one regular visitor and commentor—my dad, William. But the video I did in the hospital the other day got almost two-thousand comments.”
“You’re kidding me.”
She shook her head. “Nope. I know what we’ve been doing has never quite sat right with you, but Louise has touched a lot of people.”
“Where did all the people commenting come from?”
Nora shrugged. “We’ve met a lot of people during our travels. Once we tell them Louise’s story and that we’re documenting it to inspire others living with terminal illness, people start following the vlog and telling their friends. Like when we were at the ranch in Montana, we met a blacksmith. We watched him put shoes on a few of the older horses. Turns out his wife works at a residential retirement community. When we told him about the trip we were taking, he told his wife, and the next day he brought her to the ranch. She’d shown some of our videos to the residents where she worked, and a few who had started to be homebodies reached out to their families to go out more, make plans to do things they’d been putting off. I think a hundred new people followed us that day alone. People hear about Louise—or better yet, meet her—and they can’t help but be inspired.”
“Wow.”
“You should check out my recent vlog posts, read some of the comments. People from all over are rooting for her with each activity. Louise and I have even talked about starting a foundation because so many people have offered to sponsor our trip or just send money via Venmo.”
I searched Nora’s face. “How about you show me the comments after dinner?”
Her genuine smile was beautiful. I rubbed my breastbone again. I should’ve taken a Prilosec or something.
After we finished eating, Nora and Maddie insisted on cleaning up since I’d done all the cooking. Nora set me up with her laptop in the living room, giving me a quick tour of her website before leaving me at the page with all the videos. Of course, I pretended I hadn’t already stalked her videos—especially the ones of her in the bikini. But in truth, I hadn’t checked it in a few weeks. I hadn’t realized she’d continued posting once Gram was admitted to the hospital.
I scrolled down to the bottom and watched the first video done in the hospital. Gram’s face came on the screen. I recognized the background as the ICU ward in Gatlinburg. She must’ve recorded it when I’d stepped out to do a Zoom call once or twice, because the rest of the time Nora and I had been together.
My grandmother looked frail and weak, night-and-day different from the way she looked today. She talked about what had happened to her—giving details of the tumor location and the stroke she’d suffered. The last part got me choked up.
“Listen, I’ve had fun. Lived a good life. Loved hard. Helped raise two boys I couldn’t be prouder of. So if this is my last video, don’t worry, I’ll never be dead—not even when my heart stops pumping. Because you never truly die when you live in the souls of the people you leave behind.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and read through the thousands of comments—people from her night in jail, people from the ranch she’d visited in Montana, her skydiving instructor, people who were sick themselves. There were quite a few posts from people outside the country.
