I told her everything, about Dani and about myself. When I was finished, Grace reached for my hand.
“It wasn’t your fault, Nan. You did everything you could for her.”
“Did I? I tried. But could I have done something more? Something different? If I had, would it have made any difference?” I shrugged. “I’ll never know for sure. I try to help other people because I couldn’t help Dani. Because I know what can happen when people are unable to confront their fears and feelings in the wake of loss.
“I’m not saying that what happened to Dani will happen to you. But when a deeply loved one dies, sometimes the people left behind want to die too. They might not say so out loud, they might not even be aware of what they’re feeling, but it’s there just the same. They start pulling back, turning inward, disconnecting from people and things they used to enjoy before or might enjoy now, living in the past and hiding from the future because they are so afraid of what it might bring.”
Grace turned her head, staring out the front window of her condo. Outside, two girls wearing pink bike helmets cycled past, but I’m not sure she really saw them.
“When Malcolm fell,” she whispered, her voice rasping and her eyes distant, “it was like I was right back there again, on the mountain, watching Jamie fall and not being able to stop it or help him. Life is so uncertain, and cruel. You can do everything right and still everything can go wrong. If something happened to Luke . . .” Grace swallowed hard and turned to face me. “I can’t go through that again, Nan.”
“Yes,” I said. “You can. And if you inhabit this earth for any length of time, chances are you will.
“Jamie took a long time leaving this world. He fell down that cliff and started dying by inches, and because you loved him so much, because what the two of you had was so wonderful and rare, you tried to die by inches too. But you couldn’t do it. Because there’s too much life in you, Grace—too much life, and love, and joy—and all of it is meant to be shared.”
I looked toward the coffee table to the plain white box with Jamie’s ashes and the quilt blocks lying next to it, scraps of cloth and memory stitched into a story.
“Grace, when you’re sewing those blocks, thinking about Jamie and how much you miss him—do you ever stop to think how lucky you are to have had someone to miss? Do you ever think about what your life would be like if you’d never met him, never loved him, never let him love you back?
“That’s the thing that truly does kill people by inches, Grace—the lack of love. For all that you’ve gone through, that’s one thing you’ve never suffered from.”
“That’s true,” she said softly. “Not since Jamie. He loved me. I don’t know why, but he did.”
“I bet Luke could tell you.”
Grace looked at me with liquid eyes. She smiled sadly but didn’t speak.
“Every love story turns sad eventually, Grace. If someone loves you and you decide to love them back, at some point you are going to get hurt. The only way to avoid it is never to love in the first place. That’s the deal. I know that and so do you. That’s why this is so hard.
“Luke truly loves you, I have no doubt about that. Do you love him? If you do, we both know it’ll be worth it—a hundred, a thousand times over. But that’s a question only you can answer.”
Grace walked me to the door and I said I’d see her on Monday. “Monica should be back by then. It’ll be interesting to hear how she handled a whole week of rest.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. I can’t come next week. Don’t worry,” Grace said, reading the concern in my eyes. “There’s just somewhere I need to . . . something I have to do. I’ll be back the week after. Promise.”
“Okay. But you call me if you need anything.”
“I will. Tell Luke I’ll call him in a few days.”
“You don’t want to tell him yourself?”
She shook her head. “Not now.”
* * *
After Dani stole my purse, I had to buy a new one. It’s much bigger than my old one, too big really. So when I left Grace’s house and I reached into my purse to find my keys, I couldn’t. I started walking with my head down in the direction where I’d left the car, rooting around in my bag in search of the missing keys.
Finally, a block and a half later, I found them inside a small, interior pocket I’d never known existed until that moment, and looked up just in time to avoid tripping on a homeless woman with dirty blond hair and a vacant expression, wearing a full-skirted dress of a very familiar style.
“Dani?”
Her movements were so slow and her reactions so delayed, it was almost like watching someone who was underwater. Finally, her eyes cleared enough to recognize me.
“Hi, Mom.”
I squatted down so I could speak to her at eye level.
“Dani, what are you doing here?”
“I live here,” she said, spreading her arms wide, her fingers stretching toward two concrete planters. “Sometimes. I’ve been gone for a few days, maybe a couple of weeks. A friend of mine had some—”
She stopped in mid-sentence. I wasn’t sure if it was because she’d lost her train of thought or because she decided that whatever she was going to say wasn’t any of my business.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Visiting my friend, Grace. In that building, in the next block.”
A smile slowly spread over Dani’s face. “You know Grace? She’s really nice. I like her.”
“So do I. Dani, did Grace make that dress for you?” She nodded. “And does she call you Sunny?”
“Everybody
