Chapter 34
TIME HEALS EVERYTHING
NORA
I close my eyes and let the tears fall freely down my cheeks as Mom carefully unwraps the bandages around my arm. The burn from the fire throbs with each layer she peels away, but it’s nothing compared to the ache in my chest that’s been there for days now.
I hadn’t even realized I’d been burned that night.
Not until hours later, when the adrenaline crashed and Jay noticed the blistering on my arm. At the time, all I could think about was getting to Nate and Jake. I remember screaming their names, clawing through debris with bare hands, the heat licking at my skin, but I didn’t feel it.
Pain didn’t stand a chance against fear.
The gauze sticks to my skin in places, and I wince as she works it free.
“I know it hurts, sweetheart,” Mom says softly, her voice carrying that gentle wisdom she’s always had. “I’m almost done.”
I hold back more tears, not sure how I even have any left.
Mom looks at me with loving eyes, ones that haven’t slept much either since the fire.
“Sometimes the healing hurts more than the original injury. But that’s how we know it’s working.”
I nod, though my throat feels too tight to speak.
“How’s Nate?” I finally manage to ask, though I’m not sure I want to know the answer.
Mom’s hands still for a moment. She’s never been one to sugarcoat things, not with me.
“He’s not doing great. Jake’s death, finding out about Scott not being his biological father... it’s a lot for anyone to process.”
“He doesn’t want to see me,” I whisper, and the admission feels like swallowing glass.
Mom starts wrapping fresh gauze around my arm, her movements deliberate and careful.
“You have to give him time, Nora. Not only is Jake gone, but everything he thought he knew about his family, about himself, it’s all been turned upside down.”
She shakes her head, talking more to herself than to me.
“I can’t believe I didn’t pick up on it after all these years.”
The dam I’ve been holding back finally breaks.
“Mom, I’m scared he’s slipping away and I can’t reach him,” I sob, the words tumbling out in a rush. “I’m scared that after everything he’s been through, he’s just going to shut me and everyone out completely.”
Mom sets down the medical supplies and turns to face me fully.
“He’s hurting, Nora. Nate is like a wounded animal right now—he needs time and space to tend to his own wounds before he can emerge from hiding.”
“But he doesn’t even want to see me.” My voice cracks on the last word.
Mom pulls me into her arms, and I collapse against her shoulder, letting the tears come.
“That boy loves you so much,” she murmurs into my hair. “Sometimes I think he doesn’t know what to do with it.”
She holds me while I cry, her hand stroking my hair the way she used to when I was little and had nightmares. When my sobs finally subside, she pulls back to look at me.
“When people are drowning, sometimes they push away the very people trying to save them. So they don’t pull them under with them. He just needs a bit of time.”
Her words follow me as I leave the house later, needing to escape the suffocating weight of my own thoughts. There’s nowhere I can go that doesn’t remind me of either Sullivan boy, so I grab my bike and pedal aimlessly until I find myself at the park.
I claim an empty bench and watch a group of kids playing tag across the grass—three boys and a little girl, maybe eight or nine years old. They’re using the trees as bases, their imaginations turning the playground into some elaborate fantasy world only they can see.
One of the boys pretends to be a bird—or maybe even a dragon—chasing the others with his arms spread wide like wings. The little girl squeals with delight as she darts between the trees, her pigtails bouncing.
The tears come again, unexpected and fierce.
I remember being that age, remember the four of us—me, Jake, Nate, and Ollie—spending entire summer days in this same park.
So how did we end up here?
How did we go from that innocent happiness to this suffocating grief in what feels like the blink of an eye?
“Mind if I take a seat?”
I turn to find Alfie standing beside the bench, wearing his infamous paperboy hat that looks older than he is but somehow makes him more himself. His eyes are kind behind his glasses, and there’s something about his presence that immediately makes me feel less alone.
“Of course.” I say, wiping away my tears with the back of my hand.
He settles beside me with a small grunt, and for a while, we just sit in comfortable silence, watching the kids play. There’s something peaceful about being near him.
“You’re carrying a heavy load,” he says finally, his voice gentle but matter-of-fact.
I let out a shaky breath.
“I don’t know what to do, Alfie. I don’t know how to help anyone, including myself.”
“Sometimes the hardest thing to learn is that we can’t fix other people’s pain,” he says, adjusting his hat. “We can sit with them in it, we can offer our love, but we can’t take it away.”
“But I feel so helpless,” I admit. “Jake is gone, and Nate won’t let me be there for him, and I keep asking myself why does God take people like Jake so young?
People who had so much to give, so much life left to live?
Why does the universe seem to get a kick out of breaking the people who deserve it least? ”
Alfie nods slowly.
“I’ve been asking that question for about seventy years now. Lost many brothers in Vietnam, my own when he was barely eleven. Brightest kid you ever met, had plans to be a teacher. For the longest time, I was angry at God, at the universe, at anyone who’d listen.”
“I used to think there was some grand plan, some reason behind the pain. But sitting here, watching these kids play with the same joy we once had, I can’t find any meaning in Jake’s death.”
He pauses, watching as one of the boys helps the little girl up after she’s fallen.
“You know what’s a hard truth to swallow? Sometimes we don’t want to heal or move forward because the pain is the last link to what we’ve lost. Holding onto that hurt feels like holding onto them.”
His words force me to look at him.
“So what are you supposed to do?”
“We learn to carry it differently,” he says simply. “The love doesn’t go away, it just changes shape. And sometimes, when we’re ready, we find ways to honor what we’ve lost by how we choose to live.”
I think about Jake, about his infectious laugh and his way of making everyone feel like they mattered.
“I don’t know if I’m strong enough to handle any of this anymore.”
“Strength isn’t about not feeling the pain,” Alfie says. “It’s about feeling it and choosing to keep going anyway. That young man of yours, he’s learning that lesson the hard way right now.”
“And if he doesn’t want to dig himself out of the dark?”
The question slips out before I can stop it, revealing the fear that’s been eating at me for days.
Alfie turns to look at me, his eyes full of understanding.
“Love that’s real doesn’t disappear just because life gets hard. But sometimes people need to find their way back to themselves before they can find their way back to us.”
We sit in silence again, and I watch the kids gather their things as someone calls them to head to the car. Soon it’s just Alfie and me and the lengthening shadows of late afternoon.
“Did you ever hear the story of the woman who asked a gardener why her plants kept dying?” Alfie asks suddenly.
I shake my head.
“She tried everything—more water, less water, different soil, fancy fertilizers. Nothing worked. So finally she asks this old gardener what she’s doing wrong.” He adjusts his hat again, a small smile playing at his lips. “Do you know what he told her?”
“What?”
“He said, ‘Stop trying so hard to make them grow. Your job isn’t to force life into them. Your job is to remove what’s stopping them from growing on their own.’”
“What was stopping them?”
“Too much of everything,” Alfie says, standing up slowly. “Too much attention, too much intervention, too much fear that they wouldn’t make it without constant help. I think at times, the most loving thing we can do is give people space to find their own way to the light.”
He tips his hat to me.
“That burn on your arm is going to heal, Nora. But only if you let it breathe. Same goes for all the other wounds you’re carrying.”
As he walks away, I stay on the bench, watching the empty playground like it might offer answers. I think about gardens and growth—about how some things need space to survive, and how loving someone doesn’t always mean keeping them close.
Sometimes it means letting them go before you start pulling up the roots.