Chapter 29
When Zander finally swung open the door to his papou’s old room, nothing happened.
No gust carrying long-stored memories, no shivers down his spine.
Only old beige furniture and glints of dust dancing through shafts of sunlight.
Stilling at the threshold, Zander felt the phantom of Penny’s hand on his back, soothing him. And he stepped inside.
His fingers cut twin trails through the thick layer of dust on the bed frame, the dresser, and the dark wood desk where his grandfather would sit, flipping through mail.
It didn’t matter if it was junk or not, Papou always opened every piece and read it front to back, then piled all the letters together on his desk.
Threadbare clothes filled the dresser. Zander pulled out one brown button-down and shrugged into it, pulling it down over his T-shirt. Just as he’d suspected, it fit him perfectly.
At the window, he pushed back the tan curtain and looked down. He had the perfect view of the front porch and long driveway.
The desk held a framed photo of Papou and his wife, arms around each other and smiling in black and white.
They were young, maybe early twenties. Zander’s grandmother—though he rarely thought of her that way—had long straight hair and a turtleneck.
She looked like his mom when she’d been younger and healthier—big brown eyes and high cheekbones that raised her whole face with a smile.
Zander lowered himself into an old wooden swivel chair that groaned under his weight. The seat beneath him tipped, sending him into a weightless fall before something creaked and caught.
“Christ.” Despite having moved slowly through the room, Zander’s heart thundered. He watched the slight tremor in his hands as he pulled open drawers, looked through old mail, bills from over a decade ago, empty pill bottles, and Christmas cards from people whose names he didn’t recognize.
It was all so mundane. Years of paper and dust on the dresser. Just normal life and signs of the passage of time.
At least now Zander knew he could let this room go like the others. Empty it out and organize it into piles—donate, throw out, recycle. Make it ready for its next life. Finally call Monica about the showings and put up the For Sale sign outside.
As he pulled out the last desk drawer, papers shifted to reveal a glossy photo between some old newspaper clippings.
A photo of Zander.
He lifted the whole stack out, flattening it on the desk with a brush of his palm.
AFRO-CUBAN DINER WOWS OLD TOWN
It was the article from Bon Appétit from about four years ago. There was a photo of the restaurant’s chef, Anton, with members of the kitchen crew. Tucked in at the side of the photo, smiling big, was Zander.
It had been his first splashy project, garnering national press and elevating his name as someone to know in the New England restaurant world.
And it was in his grandfather’s desk drawer.
Zander sifted further through the papers from the drawer. There was a cutout Boston Globe review of another restaurant he’d partnered on, and a printout of Zander’s bio from the website Mallory had helped him build.
The room held no computer, no printer. Where the fuck had this piece of paper even come from?
A few minutes later, the desk was covered in yellowing restaurant reviews and computer printouts, Zander’s face was wet, his heart a confused mess.
A younger Zander might have been relieved, happy, or even smug to see the evidence of his grandfather’s attention laid out like this, so plain to see.
But now it only made him deeply, achingly sad.
Zander rose from the desk, the chair skidding behind him as he broke for the door. He’d never understood the man who’d made a life in this room, and he understood him even less now. He had a lifetime of questions that would never be answered.
But though he’d never get answers from Papou himself, maybe he could find answers somewhere else.
Ten minutes later he knocked on Ruth and Cynthia Becker’s front door.
When Penny’s grandmother peeked outside, her eyes went wide, then softened.
“Penny’s not here, honey.” She looked past him, to the trees. “She just left a few minutes ago. I think she was due for a long hot bath and a cup of tea.”
He longed to know how Penny’s conversation had gone, how she was feeling now that she’d unloaded the burden, what help she might need with her next steps.
But that wasn’t why he’d come.
“Actually, ma’am, I’m here to talk to you. I’m hoping you can tell me about my grandfather.” Zander let out a long breath and steadied his voice. “You talked like maybe you’d known him a little, and I thought maybe—but I’m sorry, if it’s a trouble, I can—”
“Zander.” Cynthia’s tone brooked no argument. She nodded to two porch chairs arranged between pots of blooming flowers. “I told you to call me Mimi. Now sit down, honey. I’ve only been waiting for you to ask.”
Cynthia closed the door behind her and took a seat.
Zander sank into the other chair, trying to steady his tapping legs by pressing his hands into his knees.
After a moment, Cynthia was the first to break the silence.
“You want to tell me what brought this on? You’ve been here all summer, and you haven’t asked about him once. ”
Guilt gnawed at Zander, pushing at that same bruise that ached when he thought about how long he’d stayed away.
He swallowed past the feeling. “I was looking through his stuff. I found some clippings about me—work projects and everything. It—” He grabbed for words to describe his extreme disorientation, the way his heart felt all mashed up. “I’m confused.”
Cynthia nodded. “You didn’t think he cared.”
“He didn’t act like it.”
She watched him thoughtfully for a moment, then looked over in the direction of his house.
“He and I were never close. Even though we lived next door to each other, he was a hard person to know. His parents were—” She sighed, shaking her head, then looked to Zander.
“Nikolai would have seemed like a teddy bear compared to them.”
Zander swallowed. “That’s saying a lot.”
“I don’t think he got many examples of joy. His parents weren’t a love match, and they put enormous pressure on him as their only son. I’m glad he got some fresh air when he met your grandmother. Elsie just laughed at him when he was grumpy. They really had some magic.
“She was his sunshine, and it seemed like he couldn’t find it again without her.
When your sweet mama started acting out, he just disappeared into himself.
I tried reaching out to him, but he wouldn’t have it.
I think he felt he was failing Elsie by struggling so much with your mom, and that just made him close up even more. ”
“I can’t make sense of any of it,” Zander admitted. “It was easy when I was young to just assume the worst about him. That he was a cold asshole who didn’t care about me or my mom.”
“And now you’re questioning that?”
“He was a cold asshole. And as a kid, that’s all I saw. I was so mad at everybody, so confused about what I was doing wrong and why nobody seemed to want me, and he just became the center of that. But he had to be more than that, right?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think,” he admitted. “I know that when I was doing all that shit here every summer—stealing tractors and messing with the public pool—people thought I was just some punk kid. To them, it was probably that simple.”
Mimi caught Zander’s eye and held his gaze. “But you were more than that. I imagine you were hurting, quite a lot.”
“I was,” he pushed out. “In ways I didn’t even understand then, and it made me so self-destructive.
But the thing was”—and this was something Zander had spun around in his head over and over, something he couldn’t make sense of—“he could have told my mom I couldn’t come, that I couldn’t stay for the summer.
He could have told her I was more trouble than I was worth and that I had to stay in Detroit with her. ”
Cynthia nodded. “Probably so.”
Zander tugged at his own hair, wishing something could just be fucking simple. “But he must not have, because I was here. And I had a bed, and food in the fridge, and he found me jobs when he could, and he left stupid articles for me on the stupid kitchen table.”
And every time Zander had snuck out the front door and down the driveway, trying to run away, his grandfather had been close behind. Because his papou was always watching, standing alone in that drab bedroom looking out his window.
“God.” Zander slammed his eyes shut as his face fell into his hands. “I think he was doing his best.”
Cynthia’s hand, light as the breeze, curled over his shoulders.
She held it there as he fought for a breath, then spoke quietly.
“I think he was, too. But Zander…” When she paused, he lifted his face to look at her.
She didn’t have Penny’s eyes, but she had her smile, the one that settled something in his veins. “You still deserved better, honey.”
She rubbed down his arm and took his hands in hers. “He was doing his best, and you still deserved better. From Nikolai and from your mother.”
Zander stared at Cynthia, breathing slowly. It was a heady truth, sharp and soft at the same time, and he didn’t have a place to put it, not yet. For now, all he could do was sit in the rubble of her truth-bomb, knowing that sometime the dust would settle.
He studied Cynthia’s small hands closed over his, each line telling its own story.
He’d never touched Papou’s hands. That last summer, when Zander managed to buy his own car and stood triumphantly in the kitchen, telling his grandfather he was getting out of that shithole, the old man had silently offered a handshake.
But Zander’d only scoffed and gone outside, letting the screen door slap shut behind him.
“He deserved better, too.” He tipped his gaze up to Cynthia, determined to look someone in the face as he said it out loud. “I should have come back. I did so much work to heal and be better, and I should have used some of that to get over my own shit and come back.”
Tears welled over his bottom lids, but he didn’t bother wiping them off.
Instead, he watched them land where his hands were joined with Cynthia’s.
“My mom couldn’t be here. She couldn’t handle it.
But I could have. I should have let him meet Winter, I should have come, I shouldn’t have let him die alone. ”
There was the rough scrape of a chair, and then Cynthia’s arms were around him, pulling his face into her shoulder. Dragging in deep breaths, Zander let himself break open.
He’d cried to Mallory and Quinn. He’d cried on his therapist’s couch while she handed him tissues. But he’d never cried like this, held by someone’s mother and grandmother, who smelled like baby powder and peppermint and knew just how to rub his back.
He wondered if this was how Winter felt in Zander’s arms. Like he was safe, if just for a few minutes. God, he hoped so.
Zander leaned into Cynthia for another breath before pulling away. He sniffed and wiped his face. “I regret so much, but he’s gone. I can’t do it differently. I don’t know what to do with that.”
“I’m not one to say what you should or shouldn’t have done, Zander.
But I know we can’t redo the past.” Her light hand brushed hair from his forehead.
“What’s done is done, and we’re stuck carrying that regret with us, and sometimes it can be quite a weight.
The best we can do to help ourselves is stop the next regrets before they can form. ”
Zander rose.
Earlier he’d felt an urgency to open that door, to revisit the past. But now, he could think only about the future. “Thank you, Mimi. I appreciate all of this more than you know.”
Her smile had a mischievous twist. “Going so soon? What’s the rush?”
“I, um…” Zander rubbed the back of his neck. “I think I need to go talk to someone. Prevent a future regret.”
“I reckon you do.”