Chapter 27
Cole sat beside his brother as James drove down the gravel track that led to their grandfather’s cabin.
“We don’t have to do this,” James said.
“I know, but it’s important.” Cole looked through the windshield at the canopy of trees above them.
James had arrived yesterday. They’d talked for a few hours last night, until Cole’s exhaustion took over.
As soon as he’d woken up, he knew he had to talk to his brother about how he’d felt after their granddad died.
James parked Cole’s truck in front of the cabin. They sat there for a few minutes, each lost in their own thoughts.
“It’s more run down than I imagined,” James said softly.
Cole studied the sagging veranda, the weather-beaten siding that would need a major overhaul. But beneath the rotten timber was a solid foundation and framing that would withstand more than one winter.
“It’s sturdier than it looks. Granddad built a solid cabin.
” Cole stepped out of the truck. The cold hit him first. It was sharper than he’d expected, the kind that came off the mountains and didn’t apologize for itself.
He stood with one hand on the truck door and let his body register the air, the stillness, and the sound of the pine trees.
James stood beside him. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” He wasn’t. Cole’s chest felt heavier than it should, and his legs were slower than he wanted them to be. But he started walking, and that was enough.
James caught up in a few strides. They walked toward the cabin side by side, neither of them speaking.
Without thinking, Cole crouched in front of the steps to get the key. A dull pain shot across his chest. He paused and took a deep, steadying breath.
James’s hand appeared in front of him. “I’ll get the key.”
Cole took his brother’s hand and stood upright. “Thanks. For some reason, my body doesn’t like me bending over.”
“It’s because the doctors have been poking at your heart,” James said with a frown. “I told you this would be too much.”
Cole ignored him and pointed at the front door.
James muttered something about stubborn people who should know better, but he opened the door anyway.
When James stepped inside the cabin, he took a moment to get his bearings.
Cole had felt the same way when he’d come back. It was as if their granddad’s spirit was still here, still waiting for them with a big hug and tall tales of his latest fishing adventures.
After looking around the living room, James picked up a framed photograph from the shelf, and Cole sat in the chair near the window.
“Do you remember this Christmas?” James turned the photo toward Cole.
He knew exactly which Christmas it was. “The snow came down hard on the second morning we were here.”
“We woke up and the door wouldn’t open.” James smiled as he remembered the storm. “Granddad had to pull it from the bottom, and the snow came in like it owned the place.”
“You were annoyed.” Cole studied his brother’s face. “You’d told Mom and Dad you’d be back by the twenty-seventh.”
“I was a teenager,” James said. “I thought I had important things to do.”
Cole sighed. “You didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t.” James looked at the photograph again before setting it back down. “We were snowed in for a week. Granddad taught you to play chess. You beat him on the fifth day, and he spent the next two days acting like it hadn’t happened.”
Cole remembered the simple chess pieces, the small oil lamp on the table between them, and his grandfather’s hands, the knuckles wide, and the skin creased from years of outdoor work. Think three moves ahead, his granddad had said. Not one. Not two. Three. That’s the difference.
“He let me win,” Cole said.
James turned around. “He didn’t.”
“He did. He was always more moves ahead of me.” Cole looked at the window. The pines held their position outside, steady and indifferent to the conversation happening in the cabin. “He wanted me to feel like I could beat him, so I’d keep trying.”
James was quiet.
“I figured it out years later,” Cole said. “The way he played. He’d sacrifice a piece early to make me feel confident. Then he’d pull back and let me figure out the next moves myself.” He paused. “He did that with everything.”
James crossed the room and sat in the other chair, the one their grandfather had always taken.
“I want to talk to you about something,” Cole said.
James didn’t move.
Cole looked at his hands. He’d been trying to find the right words to say since James had arrived in Sapphire Bay, and he still wasn’t sure what they were. Maybe the words didn’t matter. They might just be waiting for the right moment or the right place to surface.
He was in the right place now, and Cole didn’t know when they’d both be here again.
“On the morning Granddad died, he sat on the porch steps and said he felt tired.” Cole stopped as an image of his granddad filled his mind.
His hand was pressed flat against his chest and he was telling Cole he’d be okay.
“I asked him if he wanted something to eat. He said no. He said he just needed to rest for a little while.”
James was very still.
“I went fishing.” Cole said the words plainly. No self-pity in them. Just the fact of it. “I thought he was tired. I thought it would pass. It was a sunny afternoon, and I didn’t want to waste it.”
Cole took a deep breath. “When I got back, he was still on the steps. He couldn’t move properly.
His words weren’t—” Cole stopped. He pressed his thumb into the palm of his other hand.
“I didn’t understand what I was looking at.
I was eleven years old, and my grandfather was one of the strongest men I knew. ”
James made a sound that might have been his name, but Cole kept going.
“I ran for help to the farmhouse through the trees.” He exhaled slowly. “By the time we got back, it was too late. I was too late.”
For fifty-three years, he had kept this sentence inside him. He’d carried it into every project, every deadline, every relationship he’d let go of too easily because it had seemed simpler than staying.
“I’ve never said that out loud before,” Cole told his brother.
James rose and pulled a chair beside Cole’s. “There was nothing you could have done. Granddad had an undiagnosed heart condition. The doctor explained it to Mom and Dad. Even if you’d gone for help when he first sat on the steps, it might not have given him enough time to get to a hospital.”
“I know that,” Cole said softly. “I’ve known it for years.
But knowing something and being free of it are two different things.
For most of my life, I’ve believed that everything that came after Granddad’s death was shaped by those two hours.
” He looked at his brother. “I’ve been running from what happened, and wishing I could have changed it. ”
James wiped tears from his eyes. “I didn’t know you felt like that.”
Cole handed his brother a tissue. “When Noah was driving me to the hospital, I was afraid I was dying, just like Granddad, and I’ve been afraid each day since then.
I kept thinking, if this is it, if I’m coming to the end of my life, I haven’t said the things I need to say.
I’ve built something in Sapphire Bay, and there are people here who matter to me.
” He paused. “But none of that changes what I haven’t told you. ”
James looked at him.
“You’ve been calling me for over forty years,” Cole said.
“Every time something happens. Every time I get it wrong or push too hard or disappear into work for months at a time. You always call.” His throat was tight.
He ignored it. “You’ve shown up every time I needed someone, including last week, and I’ve never once told you what that’s meant to me. ”
He stopped talking and looked at his brother.
James didn’t move for a long moment. Then he leaned forward and rested a hand on Cole’s arm. “I know,” he said.
“No.” Cole shook his head. “You assume. There’s a difference.
” He pressed on, because if he stopped he might not start again.
“You’re the only person who knew Granddad the way I did.
You’re the only person in my life who’s been there for all of it.
And I’ve given you phone calls that were too short and excuses that were too easy, and I’ve let you keep showing up without ever telling you that you’re—”
Cole’s voice broke.
He let it.
“You’re part of the reason I came back here,” Cole said.
“Not just to the cabin. To Sapphire Bay. I needed to build something good from the memories of what we’ve shared.
Something that would last. And I needed it to be in the place Granddad loved.
But underneath all of that, I needed to find a way to stop running.
” He looked at James. “I’m telling you now, because I don’t know if we’ll get another afternoon like this one, and I can’t leave it unsaid again.
You’re the best man I know, James. You always have been. ”
James’s jaw worked. He looked at the floor, then at the photograph of their granddad with his arms wrapped around them. And then he looked at Cole.
“You complete idiot,” he said finally, his voice uneven.
“You’ve been carrying this around all this time.
” He shook his head. “Granddad was seventy years old with a heart condition and a stubborn streak that could stop traffic. If you’d been sitting right next to him, he would have told you he was fine.
” James’s eyes were bright with tears. “He told me he was fine ten minutes before he walked into the lake at the Fourth of July picnic, and he could barely swim. He would never have let you know something was wrong.”
Cole looked down at his hands.
“You were eleven,” James said, more quietly. “You were a kid. And Granddad loved you more than anything. He would have hated knowing you’ve been carrying this guilt around.”
Cole almost smiled. “He would have told me to pull my socks up and get on with life. Granddad didn’t believe in living in the past.”
“Except when it suited him,” James said as he wiped his eyes.
They laughed, and the sound of it moved through the cold cabin like something that had been waiting there.
At one point, James stood up, put his hands in his pockets, and looked at the loft. “I used to lie up there and listen to Granddad breathing,” he said. “He had a slow, steady rhythm that relaxed me. I always slept better when I could hear him.”
Cole didn’t answer. He looked at the ladder with its worn rungs and thought about what it had meant to be safe in this place. How the world had seemed, for those years, like something that could not reach them here.
James checked his watch. “We should drive back before it gets too dark.” He pulled up the zipper on his jacket, then stopped. “I want you to know something, Cole. What you said about me being the best man you know.” He looked at his brother. “I feel the same way about you. I always have.”
Cole held his gaze. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
When James opened his arms, Cole stepped into his brother’s embrace and held him tightly. They were bound by the same DNA, the same sense of right and wrong. And the same memories that had shaped them long before they understood what they were being given.
When they stepped away from each other, James picked up a framed photograph from the shelf. “Take this with you.”
Cole looked at the two boys in the photo, standing on either side of a man who knew exactly what each of them needed. “Are you sure?”
“It belongs with you,” James said. “It always has.”
Cole took the photograph and held it carefully.
They left the cabin as they’d found it. Cole pulled the door closed on its stiff hinges, and James crouched and pressed the key back into the gap beneath the bottom step.
When he straightened, he looked at Cole. “Still there,” he said.
“Still there.”
They walked back to the truck without hurrying. The cold had sharpened while they were inside, and the trees had gone very still beneath a darkening sky.
Cole got into the truck and rested the photograph on his knee.
James started the engine, pulled back onto the road, and didn’t ask Cole how he was feeling.
He already knew.