Chapter 24 Drew
Drew
“When are we going to stop lying to her?” Drew said as he and his grandpa stood inside the Village gift shop, examining postcards while his grandma flitted around looking for souvenirs.
It was the question that had been circling his mind all day.
After taking photos of Ari, he’d headed over to the skeleton track to photograph an athlete on the Latvian team named Andris.
Andris’s brother was also his coach, so he and Drew struck up a conversation about all the stress their siblings endured.
A conversation that reminded him of the secrets he was keeping from his sister.
“After the Olympics,” his grandpa said firmly.
“Of course.” That was one thing they were in complete agreement about. “But when?”
“You’re stressing me out, Andrew,” his grandpa said as he tied and then retied his scarf, looking out at the snow instead of meeting his eye.
It was the conversation they’d been having ever since Drew had moved back home.
His grandparents had done a pretty good job of hiding the worst of his grandma’s symptoms when he’d FaceTimed them from college.
But it was impossible not to notice her worsening condition when he’d moved back home.
It was still mostly small things: losing her keys, getting overwhelmed at the grocery store, and calling old friends by the wrong name.
But the more time Drew spent with her, the more aware he became of her deterioration.
She’d called him in tears a few days before Christmas, after getting lost while driving to the grocery store.
By the time Drew had arrived to pick her up, she’d dusted herself off.
Greeting him with a joke and telling him she was overreacting because she hadn’t had her morning coffee yet.
But back at the house, the three of them sat down and decided that it wasn’t safe for her to drive anymore.
In January, Drew had decided to make himself useful by cleaning out the attic and updating a few family albums. But when he’d shown her a handful of photos from the trip they’d taken to Canada, she’d stared blankly at them, unable to recall a single thing they’d done on a trip just two years ago.
So, Drew insisted he accompany his grandma to her next doctor’s appointment, which confirmed his fears.
Things were progressing faster than expected.
To the average person, his grandma seemed completely fine, if not slightly scatterbrained.
But it took only a full week together to see it was more serious than that.
“I’m just saying we can try to hide it, but eventually Thandie’s gonna find out. And then, it won’t matter that we were trying to protect her. It will just feel like a betrayal.”
“What will feel like a betrayal?” his grandma asked as she walked toward them.
“Getting to her game late. Let’s speed up,” Drew said, slapping on a cheerful expression and walking to the exit of the gift shop.
As Drew stepped outside, he noticed it was beginning to snow.
He hated the cold, which was one of the main reasons he’d decided to go to college in California—a college he could reenroll in, he reminded himself.
Drew lived for the West Coast’s endless blue skies and proximity to the ocean.
There was always something to do in LA, and the people he met there provided him with endless sources of inspiration.
He could lie to himself about many things—he did it all the time.
But there was no denying that he missed California.
He was trying his best to live in the moment though, so he forced himself to push those memories aside and focus on the present.
He was about to see if his grandparents were following him when he heard the sound of an alarm.
He turned around. His grandma walked through the gift shop exit, nonchalant.
But a security guard immediately followed her out.
“Ma’am, you have to pay for that,” he said, sounding nervous. The guard was staring directly at his grandma. He was trying to look tough, but there was a nervousness in his eyes.
“Excuse me?” his grandma said. “Young man, do I look like a person that would steal?” she asked.
She didn’t. She was the kind of woman who displayed her wealth in her appearance: designer handbags, tailored coats, and decadent brooches.
She wasn’t a rulebreaker, so she handed the security guard her shopping bag and receipt.
But she made sure to give him the kind of glare that would make even the most confident person feel like they were being scolded by their grandmother.
The guard looked at her receipt and apprehensively searched her bag.
Then he sighed, as if he didn’t want to say anything but knew he had to.
“Your pocket,” he said reluctantly.
“Yes?” she said incisively, smoothing down the fabric of her coat.
“The left pocket,” the security guard sighed.
She reached down, indignant. But her expression fell as her hand went into the pocket and came out holding an ornate snow globe.
“I … I don’t know how that got there,” she said, looking around, embarrassed.
A few tourists who’d been leaving the gift shop glanced over and then immediately looked away.
Drew’s heart sank a little as he watched his grandpa’s face fall, too.
He reached for his wallet, gently took the snow globe from his wife’s hands, and walked straight back into the shop.
Muttering an apology and explanation to the security guard.
Drew immediately went over to put his arm around his grandma’s shoulders. She hated sympathy as much as she hated talking about her illness. So, Drew did what he did best.
“That’s where Thandie gets it from. Sweeping things up before anyone can notice? If you played hockey, I bet you’d steal a puck as soon as you got on the ice,” he teased. His grandma gave him a short look of gratitude, then smiled, playing along.
“I taught her everything she knows,” she laughed, though they both knew full well that she’d never stepped foot on a skating rink.
But humor was their shared strategy for getting through this.
So, they spent the entire walk to Thandie’s ice hockey match tossing jokes back and forth until the globe was almost entirely forgotten.
When they got to the stadium, Drew cheered for his sister and tried to focus on the game.
But he couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that his and his grandpa’s strategy—to ensure that Grandma and Thandie didn’t spend too much time alone together—wasn’t a lasting solution.
Eventually, Thandie would find out. Drew just hoped he could stop that from happening during the two most important weeks of her life.
After the first period of the game ended, he left his grandparents to head over to his next assignment.
As much as he wanted to watch his sister’s entire match, he was at the Olympics to work.
So, he took a shuttle to the speed-skating rink to photograph a Swedish athlete who was at the Olympics for the first time and ask him about his journey to the Games.
Then he walked to one of the athletes’ gyms to do a mini photo shoot with the Nigerian bobsled team Ari had introduced him to.
They showed him their training routines and joked about how, in their sport, every day at the gym was arm day.
Once he’d completed his list of athletes for the day, he took a chairlift to the top of the Village.
After a series of scattered texts between Ari’s training sessions and Drew’s assignments, they’d decided on a location for their second fake date: Schokoladenzeit, the glamorous hot chocolate bar up in the mountains.
When he walked inside, Drew immediately understood why it had become the most-talked-about venue in that year’s Village.
Schokoladenzeit wasn’t a regular café with a broad selection of flavors, or even just a specialty hot chocolate shop with Olympic-themed decorations.
It was the Willy Wonka’s workshop of hot chocolate bars.
As soon as he stepped in, he was hit by the delicious smell of chocolate and the warm scents of hazelnut, vanilla, coffee beans, caramel, and cinnamon.
The bar was designed like a luxurious log cabin with armchairs covered in thick blankets and fluffy pillows at every turn.
There was a fireplace at the center of the room and warm candles twinkling all around them.
Drew settled into a cozy corner visible enough to meet Ari’s requirement for a very public date.
He was leafing through the menu and browsing the thirty-plus types of hot chocolate they had on offer when he saw a bright blue puffer coat cross the bar.
He wanted to tell Ari about Thandie right away, but the first thing he noticed when she walked toward him was the expression on her face.
She looked worn out. Her shoulders slumped and her lips turned down.
When they made eye contact, she gave him a half-hearted wave.
“Bad day?” he asked as she plopped herself on the opposite side of the couch he was sitting on. She dropped her bag and sighed.
“Let’s just say that if I didn’t have two more games this week, I’d be drinking something a lot stronger than hot chocolate,” she said, unbuttoning her coat.