Chapter 4
LINDA
Linda drove the last stretch toward Sanibel with both hands on the wheel and her eyes fixed on the road ahead, as if holding the car perfectly straight could somehow keep the rest of her life from tilting any further off its axis than it already had.
The light over the gulf had gone gold and long.
A late afternoon kind of gold, the kind that softened everything it touched and made even the highway signs look a little kinder.
Under different circumstances, Linda might have rolled down the window and let the warm Florida air wash over her face the way she always used to on this stretch.
Today, she kept the windows up and the air conditioning low, and listened to the small, anxious quiet that had settled in the back seat about thirty miles ago.
Sophia and Jake had been chattering on and off for most of the drive, the way kids did, but the closer they’d gotten to Sanibel, the more their voices had thinned out.
Now, Sophia was looking out the side window with one hand resting on Jake’s knee, and Jake was leaning his head against his sister’s shoulder with his eyes half closed.
Linda watched them in the rear-view mirror and felt her heart squeeze. They had been so good the entire trip.
Linda hadn’t been back home to Sweet Blossom Bay in over a year.
It just hadn’t been possible as she’d been trying to sort out the mess her life had become.
Getting over the divorce. The house had gone on the market.
The conversations with Richard’s lawyers had eaten up evening after evening, and somehow the soonest she’d planned to come back had become some vague point on a calendar that kept moving further away.
She’d told herself there was time. She’d told herself Uncle George had Tom and Maggie nearby, and Buddy, and the steady rhythm of his hotel and his town.
She’d told herself she’d come for the summer, but then she couldn’t, when she realized she needed to find a job.
As the ex-husband had not only made poor investments but also played with them using her savings.
Linda had barely broken even, selling the house and what little money she had left had to last until she was earning again.
And here she was, coming for the summer, but not the way she’d ever wanted to.
Linda swallowed the lump that had risen in her throat and squared her shoulders against it.
There would be time later for guilt. Right now there was only the road, and the bay shimmering out beyond the trees, and the small, steady weight of two grandchildren who were watching her for cues on how scared they were allowed to be.
The causeway came into view at last, that long stretch of road that lifted up over the water and carried a person from the mainland onto Sanibel Island. Linda felt the small, involuntary lift in her chest that she’d felt every single time she’d crossed it since she was a girl.
“Gran, are we almost there?” Sophia asked softly from the back.
“Almost, sweetheart,” Linda answered. “We’re crossing onto the island now.”
Linda met her eyes briefly in the rear-view mirror. “I know it’s been a lot of traveling today.” She smiled. “We’ll stop by the hospital first, and then we’ll get the two of you a pizza for supper on the way to Heart House, where Rosa will be waiting.”
“Are you going to go back to the hospital?” Jake asked.
“Yes, I need to be there for the first night,” Linda explained. “You know how Uncle George hates hospitals? Well, he hates them even more when he’s the patient.”
The kids had a laugh at that.
“I can’t imagine Uncle George ever being in a hospital,” Sophia admitted. “He is the healthiest, most active person I know.” Her eyes widened. “And my parents are very, very active with their jobs and lifestyle.”
“Yes, Uncle George is in extremely good shape for his age,” Linda agreed. “That’s why this fall and his hip are going to make him a little grumpy.”
“Nah,” Jake stood up for his great-uncle. “Uncle George is never grumpy.” His brow creased into a frown. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard him raise his voice or seen him get angry.”
“Even when Buddy had an accident on his expensive rug,” Sophia remembered.
“Well, now he’s going to be in a lot of pain, and it’s going to be a long road to recovery for Uncle George,” Linda warned them. “It’s hard for a very active person to suddenly have to curb their energy.”
She crossed the causeway, the bay glittering out to her right in long bright streaks of gold, and let out a slow breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
The familiar shape of the island unfolded around her.
The low palms along the verge. The pale wooden signs pointing toward the various beaches.
The sleepy pace of the cars ahead of her, slower already than mainland traffic, slowed by some unspoken local agreement that nothing on Sanibel was worth rushing for.
And underneath the gentle settling of being back, underneath the small, tender flicker of homecoming, something else had begun to rise in Linda’s chest. Something she hadn’t quite let herself look at yet.
She wasn’t just going to Sanibel. She wasn’t just going to Uncle George.
She was going to that hospital. Linda’s fingers tightened on the wheel.
The same hospital. The same low cream-colored building set back from the road behind a row of tall palms. The same automatic glass doors.
The same long corridor she’d walked her mother through five years ago for the last time, holding her mother’s hand and trying not to let her see how scared she was.
Linda hadn’t been back. Not once. Not until today. The thought landed in her stomach like a stone.
She tried to push it away. She had Uncle George to think about.
She had two children in the back seat who needed her steady.
She had Tom waiting for her in that waiting room, and Tom had been holding things together by himself for hours, and the very last thing he needed was for Linda to fall apart in the lobby.
She tightened her hands on the wheel and reminded herself, very firmly, that she was a grown woman of fifty-nine and that she could walk through a set of doors.
The hospital came into view at the end of the road.
Exactly as it had been five years ago. The same low building.
The same row of palms along the front walk.
The same wide circular drive with the wheelchair ramps and the automatic doors and the small bench off to the side where she’d sat for an hour after her mother was gone, unable to make her legs walk her back to her car.
Linda turned into the parking lot and found a space near the entrance. She put the car in park, switched off the engine, and sat for a moment with her hands resting on the wheel.
“Gran?” Sophia asked from the back. “Are you okay?”
Linda drew in a slow, careful breath and let it out again. “I’m all right, sweetheart. I just needed a moment.”
She turned around in her seat and looked at her grandchildren. Sophia had unbuckled her seatbelt and was leaning forward between the seats. Jake had sat up properly and was watching Linda with serious, worried eyes that were too old for nine years old.
“Are you ready?” Linda glanced at them and managed a small smile for them as they both nodded. “All right. Let’s go in.”
She got out of the car on legs that felt steadier than she’d expected, opened the back door, and Jake climbed out with Sophia behind him. Linda took Jake’s hand on one side and Sophia’s on the other and walked them across the parking lot toward the entrance.
The automatic doors hissed open as she stepped onto the mat.
The smell hit her first. The typical smell of a sterile hospital.
Disinfectant and floor wax, and the faint, slightly stale undercurrent of recycled air that Linda was going to smell in dreams for the rest of her life.
It was not a vague, generic hit. It was the exact smell of the worst day she had ever lived through.
Linda’s knees wobbled slightly, but she tightened her grip on Jake’s hand.
She drew in a careful breath through her mouth and reminded herself that this was not that day.
This was Uncle George. Uncle George was going to be all right.
Her mother was not in this building and hadn’t been for five years. Linda pulled herself together.
“Gran?” Jake’s small voice piped up beside her. “Your hand is squeezing tight.”
“Sorry, sweetheart,” Linda whispered, and loosened her grip a little. “Just give me a second.”
“Are you okay?” Sophia asked softly on her other side.
“I will be,” Linda told her, and meant it. “Just give me a second.”
She stood in the entryway for a long moment, her grandchildren on either side, breathing.
In. Out. In. Out. The lobby stretched ahead of her.
The reception desk. The small cluster of plastic chairs near the window where she had sat with Tom in the early hours of that morning five years ago, before they’d let them in to say goodbye.
The corridor that led off to the right toward where her mother had been.
Linda did not let herself look at the chairs. She walked, instead, toward the reception desk.
“Hello,” Linda said to the kind-faced woman behind the counter. Her voice came out steady, which surprised her. “I’m here to see George Heart. I believe he’s in surgery.”
“Yes, I have a record of Mr. Heart,” the woman said warmly. “Are you family?”
“His niece,” Linda responded.
“You’ll want the surgical waiting room. Down that corridor and to your left at the end, you can’t miss it. Mr. Reilly is already there waiting.” The nurse pointed in the direction.
“Thank you,” Linda said.