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She stood up and folded the blanket she was under, then walked to the back of the house with Fred and opened the door for him. The light came on and lit up the backyard while she stood there shivering.
Once he was inside, she covered the dog door for the night, locked up and went to bed.
If she was wishing Sawyer were next to her and not her dog, she wouldn’t tell a soul.
She wasn’t sure she even wanted to admit it to herself.
20
Desperate Of A Look
“Sorry it took me so long to get here and do this,” Sawyer said to his other grandparents a few days later.
“Nonsense,” his grandfather said. “I just moved it into the garage out of the way. I would have tried to get it up the ladder, but your grandmother is like a hawk and there isn’t anything I can get done without her knowing.”
He laughed at that as he moved the ladder over, climbed up, opened the door and then went back to get the container. It wasn’t so much heavy as it was cumbersome.
“Seems like I’m surrounded by grandmothers like that,” he said when he came back down the ladder and put it away.
He was in the kitchen now. His grandmother had been supervising him while he put everything away.
“How is Curt doing? What did you find out at the doctor's?”
“He needs the valve replacement surgery. It’s open heart surgery. He’s not a candidate for the minimally invasive one. He’ll be in the hospital for seven to ten days and then recovery is close to eight weeks for him is my guess. He’s older and not in good shape.”
“Oh boy,” his grandfather said. “How does he feel about it?”
“Not happy,” he said. “But he’s on board now. I think they didn’t understand and thought his chances of recovery from the surgery or making it through were less than they were. Now that he knows, he’s more willing to do it. I’m going to have to take some time off of work I think and go down to make sure Grandma is set up for him when he comes home.”
“Do you think your mother will help out?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t ask. I’d like to think so, but I can’t count on her for anything. I know Grandma is going to talk to her about it, but that doesn’t mean anything. I talked to Dad yesterday. He said he’ll take some time to go help out too.”
“Your father always loved them. Curt and Gretta were on his side more than they were Lucy’s.”
He knew that better than anyone and that could be why his mother didn’t talk to her parents much anymore. Lucy Long-Brennan felt no one was on her side.
He was willing to bet whatever man she was sleeping with at the time was on her side, but he never said that to anyone.
“I’ll make sure they’ve got the help they need. I told him that I would look into getting some home health nurses too. Their insurance will cover the bulk of it, but they need help navigating around it more than anything else.”
“It’s the right thing to do,” his grandmother said. “That is what family is for. Now if you could only find someone to take care of you.”
They didn’t hesitate to jump right in on this.
“I don’t need anyone to take care of me,” he said. “I’ve been on my own for a long time.”
“We know,” his grandmother said. “But we worry about you. Would you consider us setting you up with someone?”
He started to laugh. “I don’t need my grandmother setting me up on a blind date.”
“It’s not really a blind date,” his grandfather said. “It’s a family we know well.”
“So?” he said. “That doesn’t mean you know the person that well, do you?”
“Well, no,” his grandmother said.
“Then the answer is no,” he said.
