As he flipped through the pages, he suddenly seemed to choke up.
“Grant?” I asked gently.
“She’s smart. She’s so goddamned smart.” He swallowed and smiled at the same time, lifting a worksheet she’d gotten twenty out of twenty correct on. “She didn’t turn out like me. She’s not like me. Thank god.”
My throat burned when I realized what he was getting at. Grant had never thrived in school. Not because he didn’t give a shit, but because he just couldn’t get it. He tried, but it never clicked. Hell, every last child who’d come out of The Clink had struggled in school, but most of the kids just didn’t care. Grant did. He wanted to educate himself. To be considered a smart person.
Coming up behind him, I stared at the same sheet he was. Then I set my hand on it and lowered it back into the file. “She’s loyal. She’s determined.” I came around, so I was in front of him. “She’s got a weird sense of humor and likes breakfast for dinner.” When he wouldn’t meet my eyes, I lifted onto my toes, so I was directly in his line of sight. I pressed my hand into his chest. “She turned out a lot like you.”
I stood there for another minute, making sure that sank in, then I headed to the fridge. “Do you want something to drink? I can offer you a juice box or a juice box or a gee whiz”—I lifted a green box in the air—“a juice box.”
Grant chuckled. “I’m good, but thanks.”
“Next time you stop by, I’ll try to have an adult beverage in the fridge.”
“The most adult drink I have these days is coffee,” he replied.
“No more of the hard stuff?” I asked, closing the fridge.
Half a smile formed on his face. “Unless you count the occasional juice box when I’m feeling crazy.”
My eyebrows came together. “Really? You don’t drink anymore?”
One of his shoulders lifted. “A guy’s got to grow up sometime.” He set the file down and came over to help me wipe the scatter of sprinkles off of the counter. “You did such a great job with her. All alone, being so young.” Grant’s brows came together. “How did you do it?”
My shoulder lifted. “It was easy. I just thought about what my mom would have done, and I did the opposite.”
Half a smile crawled into place. “I know it wasn’t easy.”
“No, it wasn’t. But it was worth it.”
He dumped a handful of sprinkles into the garbage can. “How in the hell did you put yourself through dental hygiene school with a baby?”
“Sleep? I didn’t get any.” I smiled at him and took a seat at the table for a minute. It had been a long day and a draining one. My body felt done. “I had some help from a couple of neighbors, and the school I went to had a daycare program so I could take Charlie there while I was in class. We worked it out.”
“And I was making millions of dollars every year and could have set you and Charlie up, so you didn’t have to worry about a thing.” He shook his head and leaned into the counter.
“It’s okay. I made it. It was important for me to see that I could do it. It was important to know that I could take care of myself because I knew that the only reason I made it out of The Clink was because of you. You got me out of there so I could make it out here.”
Grant’s eyes landed on mine. “You could have told me. If you were worried about me getting in trouble for getting a minor pregnant, you could have told me and we could have kept it quiet.”
“No, we couldn’t have. You and I both know you wouldn’t have been content to make occasional visits to see us and drop a few large bills on the way out. You would have wanted it all. That’s who you are. I knew that if I told you, that’s what I’d have to be prepared to accept.”
He stared off to the side, crossing his arms. “You’re right. I wouldn’t have been content to come in and out of your lives like that. But I’m not saying the way you went about this was the right way either, Ryan.” His body tensed, pulling his T-shirt across the carved planes of his chest. “One minute I’m pissed you cut me out the way you did, and the next one I’m thrilled you let me back in. I feel like I’m on a damn roller coaster over here. So while I’m upside-down, why don’t you just lay the rest of it on me now?”
My heart stalled, but I played it off. “What do you mean?”
His eyes cut to mine. “Don’t play me for a fool. Just tell me.”
Now my heart was hammering too fast, like it was trying to sprout wings so I could fly out of here and escape Grant trying to corner me into this conversation.
Despite knowing this very conversation was the one we needed to have.
As soon as I opened my mouth, he sighed. “What’s going on, Ryan?” he shoved off of the counter and came toward me. “I know you reached out to me now for a reason other than it being the right time. What’s wrong?”
What’s wrong? That question kept playing in my head, again and again. What’s wrong?
Everything. Nothing.
Something.
The courage that had been evading me came rushing back all at once. “Gentle version or harsh reality?”
He huffed. “Harsh is the only reality I’ve ever known. I wouldn’t know what to do if someone tried to soften the blow, so just give it to me straight.” He slid his hands into his pockets, taking a deep breath. “I can take it.”
Harsh. It was the only version of reality I’d known too.
Inhaling, my eyes found his. “I’ve got Huntington’s.”
For a minute, his expression was a blank slate, giving nothing away. Then he licked his lips and pulled out the chair beside me. “What does that mean?” he asked slowly, his voice lower than normal. “I’ve heard of it, but right now I couldn’t tell you if it’s a damn cold virus or more along the lines of the bubonic plague.”
I stared at my hands curled in my lap. Ever so slightly, they were trembling. Not enough to draw the attention of anyone else, but enough to remind me of what disease was coiled into my genetic code. Enough to forewarn me of what was to come. “More the latter than the former.”
Grant collapsed in the chair, then scooted it closer. “Explain it to me. Before I lose my mind thinking the worst.”
I meant my smile to be reassuring, but it didn’t fool him.
His face fell at the same time it lost a few shades of color. “Jesus Christ . . .”
“It’s a neurological disorder,” I said, trying to speak as objectively about a topic I felt anything but impartial about. “A degenerative one. There is no cure.”
His eyes narrowed at the floor, but the rest of him remained unchanged. “How long have you known?”
I sucked in a breath. “I found out about a year ago. I guess there were signs that I should have picked up on before, but I just wrote it off as random clumsiness, my mind being distracted, that kind of thing.”
“What are the symptoms?” He leaned forward, clasping his hands together. “What’s this bastard going to do to you?”
My stomach folded whenever I thought about the path this illness would take me down. So I didn’t think about it—at least as much as I could. The only time I’d talked about it had been with my neurologist, shortly after I’d been diagnosed, but I knew I couldn’t dodge Grant’s questions.
“The first symptom is usually chorea, the involuntary shaking of the body. That’s what I’ve been mainly dealing with.” My eyes dropped to my hands. They’d stopped trembling, but I never knew when they’d start again. Feeling control over your body one moment and having no control over it the next was a maddening experience. To one minute feel as though your body was your ally and the next your enemy. “From there, it starts messing with people’s memory, speech . . . eventually, it trickles down into every neurological function in the human body.”
I summed it up as honestly and as simply as I could. He’d learn the gory details soon enough. Even if he wanted the harsh truth, my goal was to ease him into it. If one could be eased into finding out a person they cared about had a disease such as this one.
r /> “Will you have to be in a wheelchair? Eventually?” He stared at the chair I was sitting in, seeing something else.
“Yes. Eventually, I won’t even be able to swallow on my own. My body will be a shell.”
His hands curled into fists. “Your mind?”
I slid my hair behind my ear, tasting the familiar bite of bitterness on my tongue. “I’ll wish it was gone, but no, the mind of a person with HD is usually the last thing to go.”
Grant’s back was rising and falling higher from his breath, still glaring at the linoleum. “So you’ll be—”
“Trapped inside of my own body with no way to communicate?” I interjected. “Yes, that’s the way it will be in the end.”
A rush of air blew past his lips. “Son of a bitch.”
“Exactly,” I whispered.
“But it’ll be years before that happens, right? Decades?” His eyes lifted to mine. “You’re young. Strong. That won’t happen until you’re old, and by then, the rest of us will all be there with you. Hell, by then there might be a cure.”
My heart ached from hearing Grant go through the same questions, clinging to the same hopes I’d had when the doctor had read me my proverbial death sentence. After the initial shock of it, I’d asked questions. Dozens of them. Each one circling around some semblance of hope that this awful disease wasn’t as truly heinous as it seemed.
At the end of that meeting, I’d learned that I was right. Huntington’s wasn’t as bad as it seemed—it was worse.
“That’s true, it can take years for someone with Huntington’s to get to those final stages of the disease. Most people can make it to their fifties or sixties before it gets really bad.” Grant was in the middle of exhaling when I continued, “But I was diagnosed at a very young age. Most people don’t learn they have it until they’re in their forties or older. Finding out you have Huntington’s in your twenties is extremely rare. So my symptoms have been advancing quicker than the average HD patient.” I had to pause to take a breath, to take a moment to confront a reality I didn’t want to face.
“What does that mean?” Grant asked. “What the fuck does that mean, Ryan?”
Still, he was holding onto hope. Still, he wasn’t allowing the word to settle into his consciousness.
“It means I’m not going to make it into my sixties. Or my fifties.” More than anything else, these were the hard words to speak. Because as I said them, I envisioned each milestone that came with that passage of time.
“What are you trying to tell me?” Grant scooted closer until he was barely balanced on the edge of his seat. “Just give it to me. I can take it. You don’t need to ease me into this.”
My eyes locked on his. I saw enough strength there for me to borrow some. “I’ll be lucky to make it into my thirties.”
Grant’s throat bobbed like he was swallowing an apple whole.
“And even if I do, I won’t be the same person you’re sitting in front of now.”
His jaw set, the muscles in his neck going rigid. Still, his eyes never wandered from mine. “Are you telling me this bastard is going to kill you, Ryan Hale?”
My hand lifted to his face. It took a moment before settling against his cheek, testing to see if he was okay with me touching him. Testing to see if I was okay with touching him.
“I’m saying it’s going to make me wish it would, but no, Huntington’s won’t kill me. At least not directly.” His jaw worked beneath my hand, I guessed from him biting his cheek. “But something else will, whether it be a common cold or pneumonia or a swallowing hazard or a fall. This disease will drag me to death’s door, knock on it, then run away to leave something else to finish the job.”
That was when I saw it—the anger buried inside Grant Turner emerged. The kind of anger most people never came close to experiencing. The kind a person learned from living one cruel reality after another. The kind learned so early on in life it became a part of them—something they always carried, no matter what measure of peace they eventually found in life.
That was when I saw the boy of my childhood in the man sitting before me.
Surging out of his chair, he sent it crashing to the floor. He was across the room in two strides, his arms winding around his head as he paced the kitchen like a lion recently caged.
“Goddammit.” He whacked the doorway with his elbow as he passed it. “GODDAMMIT!”
“Please, Grant . . .” I spun in my chair, my eyes shifting to the dark hallway. “She doesn’t know.”
Mid-step, he rolled to a stop.
I swallowed and shook my head. “Charlie doesn’t know.”
His arms fell back at his sides, looking like they were suddenly too heavy to hold up. When he exhaled, his shoulders dropped like they were trying to fall to the floor. “Oh god. This is why . . .” His finger moved between his chest and down the hall, another piece of the puzzle snapping together.
“I had every intention of bringing you two together one day, but yes, fate forced my hand in making it sooner rather than later.” My eyes burned, but they stayed on him. “I wanted you two to get used to each other, to form a bond, to be a part of each other’s lives, because one day, you’re going to be her life. Her whole life.” I spoke each word slowly, purposefully. This, above everything else, was the most important part for him to understand. This was the whole reason I’d come back. “I know this is a lot to deal with, and I know how much I’m asking of you and that I have no right given the way I cut you out, but will you consider it? Will you think about it?”
His eyes, which had been glaring holes into the floor, lifted. The anger was still there—as impressive and searing as always—but there was something else too. Resolve. Determination. They were emotions I was just as used to seeing in Grant Turner as anger.
“There’s nothing to think about.” His head shook. “If the time comes for me to take over, I’ve got it.”
Something squeezed inside my chest. “When. When the time comes.”
He took a deep breath and nodded. “When it comes, I’ll be there for Charlie. I’ll be there for you.”
Before I realized it was coming, I choked on the sob that had risen in my throat. I’d known how relieved I’d be if Grant agreed to look after Charlie once I couldn’t, but I never could have prepared myself for the weight that lifted from me. The way my lungs felt capable of filling instead of feeling like they were constantly fighting collapsing. The way the thought of my death seemed less daunting.
“Being a single parent, it’s not easy.” I turned in my chair to face him. “Are you sure you don’t want to give this some thought first? I didn’t have a choice in the matter, but you do.”
“Charlie is my daughter. That isn’t a choice. She isn’t a choice.” The edge had drained from his voice, the same fading from his expression.
As quickly as the beast had broken from its cage, Grant had locked it back up. He’d grown up a lot in seven years. Probably as much as I had, and I’d been the one raising a child.
“Besides,” he continued, “you did it for seven years, having her when you were a teenager and putting yourself through school when she was a toddler. You did the hard part. I can manage the rest.” He worked up a smile, but it felt as contrived as the one I tried to return.
“You do realize she’s going to become a teenager, right?” My eyebrow lifted.
Grant held his smile, huffing. “No, she’s never turning into one of those.”
“Good luck with that,” I teased back.
Pushing off of the wall, he crossed the kitchen toward me. “I’ve got it, Ryan. So put that concern aside. It’s one less thing to worry about. I’ve got Charlie. I’ve got you. I’m not going anywhere.”
When he stopped in front of me, my smile was all real. “Thank you,” I breathed. “You have no idea . . .”
He nodded as he looked like he was working something out. He turned a few circles, rubbing at his forehead. “Fine. Okay. You and Charlie are moving up to New York with me,?
?? he said as if it was all set. “There are good doctors up there. I can take care of you. We can all be together.”
My face flattened. “Grant, no. This isn’t why I did this. I wanted you to meet Charlie and form a relationship so when the time came for me”—I had to look away—“to go somewhere else, she wouldn’t be alone. I wanted you to be a part of our lives whenever you could fit us in, not for us to take over your whole life.”
Grant flattened his hands on the table and leaned over so he was looking me straight on. Then he leaned in closer, until I could smell the faint scent of aftershave clinging to his skin, until I could see the flecks of bronze in his dark eyes. “You’re coming with me to New York.”
“No. We can’t.”
He cocked a brow, not blinking. “You didn’t give me a choice when you ran away and took our daughter with you. I’m not giving you a choice with this.”
“Grant, slow down. You just found out you have a daughter. You just met her for the first time tonight,” I said, having a difficult time meeting his eyes with him so close. Having a difficult time keeping my breath even and my heart from overreacting. “Let that sink in before you make any sudden decisions. Just slow down. I’m not dying tomorrow.”
Grant didn’t find any humor in my joke. “She’s my daughter. You’re her mother. I don’t need to slow anything down.” He spoke each word slowly as he stared into my eyes. “You’re both moving to New York.”
My body shook from a sudden spell of chorea, and at first, Grant’s face pulled into a wince. Then he pushed through it, his jaw setting with determination as he moved closer. He was showing me that he wasn’t scared. Proving to me he wasn’t.
Today, maybe, but in a year, five years, would he still feel the same? When I had to be strapped to a wheelchair so my limp body wouldn’t slide out of it, when my food had to be liquefied so I didn’t choke on it, when words stopped forming and I couldn’t even control my muscles enough to form a smile, would he still feel the same? Would he still have the same look of resolve?
I knew enough about Grant Turner to know the answer.