“Nana’s really tired, Gracie,” Miles said. “Why don’t you read that book over there for a minute?”
“But I wanna know what scared Nana.”
“Not now, Gracie. Okay?” he said gently.
“Is it like when I had chicken pox and I just wanted sleep?”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, Papa.” Grace slid down the side of the bed and shuffled over to the chair in the corner and sat down. She opened a tattered copy of The Cat in the Hat and tried to sound out the words.
Jude felt bad—shaky, headachy, sick to her stomach. “I’m losing it, Miles.”
“What do you mean?”
She loved the strong, steady movement of his hand through her hair. It calmed her more than any medication could. “I thought I saw her.”
“Mia?” he whispered.
“No.” Jude couldn’t help feeling disappointed by the question. She’d tried to see Mia. Neither psychics nor prayers had worked. And certainly, seeing Mia wouldn’t cause Jude to think she was having heart failure. The opposite would be true: such a vision would restart her heart.
She glanced sideways, saw that Grace was absorbed by the challenge of reading. “Lexi,” Jude whispered. It was the first time she’d said the name aloud in years. “She was talking to Gracie.”
Miles took her hand in his. He didn’t look at all ruffled by her admission, and his calm soothed her. “It’s common to experience dreamlike sensations or perceptual distortions during a panic attack. You know that. Remember the time you thought a car was going to hit Grace? If I hadn’t been there, you would have killed yourself running into traffic.”
“This wasn’t like that,” Jude said, but even as she said it, she questioned herself. So many weird things had happened to her since Mia’s death. “Her hair was short and curly. And she was really thin.”
“It wasn’t Lexi,” Miles said evenly. She loved how certain he sounded. Sometimes Miles’s certainty made Jude want to gouge his eyes out, but now she wanted to share his calm.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Her sentence was up in November. Remember how tense we all were, waiting to see if she would show up here?”
Tense was an understatement. Jude had spent the end of last year strung tighter than a trip wire. It wasn’t until mid-January that she had begun to relax. Miles had wanted to call the state and track Lexi’s movements, but Jude had been adamant about no contact whatsoever. She hadn’t wanted anyone in their family to even say Lexi’s name aloud, let alone find out where she’d gone.
“She didn’t show. Didn’t call or send a note. And she sent Zach’s letters back unopened,” Miles said reassuringly. “Lexi made her decision. She thinks G-R-A-C-E is better off without her.”
“You sound as if you disagree.”
“I’ve always disagreed. You know that.”
Grace looked up. “Did you just spell my name, Papa?”
Miles smiled tightly at his granddaughter. “I was testing you. Good job, Poppet.”
Grace beamed at him. “I’m the best speller in my class. I’m getting a trophy for it.”
“She’s not coming back, Jude,” Miles said softly, leaning down to kiss her forehead. “All of that is behind us.”
* * *
Grace loved hospitals. They were grownup places, and because her Papa was a surgun—or something like that—people brought her books and juice boxes and gave her paper and crayons. Sometimes, when a doctor wanted to be alone with Nana and Papa, one of the nurses would even take her for a walk through the busy hallways. Her favorite was seeing the newborn babies in the see-through plastic boxes. She loved their tiny pink and blue caps.
Even so, after a few hours, she was bored. Ariel was hiding; she hadn’t come to Grace’s wrist mirror since the playhouse, and Grace’s hand was hurting from coloring so many pictures.
She was about to whine—again—when the door to Nana’s room burst open. Dad rushed in, carrying a huge stack of books under one arm. “How is she?” he asked Papa.
“I’m fine,” Nana said. She smiled, but it looked sorta flat. Like she was tired. “You two don’t need to go into doc speak. I had a panic attack that felt a hell of a lot like a heart attack. They’re discharging me now. It’s embarrassing, really.”
Dad put his books down on the chair beside Grace. Ruffling her hair, he moved past her and went to the bedside. “Panic attack? You haven’t had one of those in years. Not since—”
Nana held up a shaking hand. “We all know the history.”
“She thought she saw Lexi,” Papa said.
Daddy drew in a sharp breath.
This was news. Nana had a reason, and the reason had a name. Grace scrambled up the metal bed rails again and hung on. “Who’s Lexi?”
No one answered her. They just looked at one another.
“A delusion?” Daddy asked quietly.
“Your dad thinks so,” Nana said. “Hopefully.”
“She’s made her feelings pretty clear,” Daddy said. “Lexi, I mean. She’s probably in Florida with Eva.”
Grace reached over and put her hand in his back pocket. It made her feel connected to him, even if he hardly noticed. “Who’s Lexi?” she asked again.
“Mildred’s niece is back from school,” Daddy said. “She has dark brown hair.”
“I’m sure that’s who it was,” Nana said.
Grace bounced a little on the bed rail. The metal clanged. It bugged her that no one was paying attention to her. “I saw a baby with four arms,” she said. “He’s in the nursery.”
“Why don’t you take Gracie home, Zach?” Nana said. “She’s been really good.”
Grace slithered down from her perch and went to the desk, where she gathered up all her pictures and crayons. Taking one drawing of a butterfly on a flower, she handed it to her Nana. “This is for you.”
Nana stared at the picture. “Thanks, Gracie. I feel better already.”
“They’re magic crayons. They make anyone better. That’s why the hospital has ’em,” Grace said earnestly. “The yellow ones can fly.”
“Come on, Grace,” Daddy said. He gathered all their things together and took her out to the car.
She climbed into the car seat in the back, and he strapped her in.
All the way home, Grace talked to her daddy.
She’d been quiet for hours, and she had so much to say. She told him about the new game Ariel had taught her and the sand dollar she’d found by the playhouse and about the new friend she’d made today and the seagull that had landed right in front of her.
“Look, Daddy,” Grace said, sitting up straighter as they drove through town. “There she is. There’s my new friend. Hi!” Grace yelled at the closed window, waving furiously. “Did you see her, Daddy? That’s a cool bike she has. It’s magic. I think she’s a movie star. She said she ate an ostrich once.”
Daddy kept driving. A few minutes later, he turned into their driveway and parked.
“You believe me about the ostrich lady, don’t you? She says she—”
“Enough, Gracie. No pretending tonight, okay? Daddy’s had a tough day.”
“I wasn’t pretending,” Grace said, stung by the accusation. She dragged her blanket off the seat beside her and wrapped it around her neck. Her daddy was in one of those moods where he wasn’t listening to her; even when he looked at her, she got the feeling he wasn’t paying attention. Like he was seeing someone else in his head. And he looked sad.
Grace had grown up around sad. She knew it was best to stay quiet and cuddle when he was like this. But she’d been quiet all day, and she was desperate to talk to someone. To him.
In the house, Grace went right to the fridge and pulled out the heavy casserole Nana had made. She worked really hard not to drop it. “This goes in the oven, Daddy,” she said, holding it out proudly.
He took it from her and put it in the oven. “I’m going to go take a shower. I’ll put a DVD in for you.”
She started to say she didn’t want to watch a movie, but he was already turning away, going into the living room.
She climbed up onto the sofa with her blanket and sucked her thumb. No one was paying any attention to her, anyway. It seemed like Daddy took the longest shower in the world, and, when he was done and walking around in his baggy sweat pants, with his wet hair dripping onto the red USC T-shirt, she followed him around, talking about anything she could think of.
“On the way to the hospital, I got to sit in the front of Papa’s car. We followed the am’blance. And he let me drive … just onto the ferry. I went really slow. I’m a good driver. I saw a killer whale eat a seal. It was gross.”
Nothing made him pay attention. He hardly even looked at her, and his face just got sadder and sadder, so much that Grace started to feel sad herself. Lonely.
By the time he put her into her jammies and tucked her into bed, she felt like crying.
Dad curled up alongside her. “I’m sorry if I’ve been weird tonight, Princess. Being in the hospital reminded me of my sister.”
“Mia,” she said solemnly, showing off that she remembered the name they hardly ever said aloud. “I bet you hate hospitals.”
“I wouldn’t be much of a doctor if that were true.” He smiled down at her. “Besides, I got you in a hospital.”
Grace snuggled against him. This was one of her favorite stories. “What did I look like?”
“You were a perfect little princess. Your eyes were sort of brownish-blue then. You hardly even cried.”
“And my mommy was there?”
“She named you Grace.”
“And you named me after your sister. Then you took me home.”
“I loved you from the very first second.”
“I know, but how come—”
“Enough, Gracie,” he said, reaching over for the book on the nightstand. “Daddy’s had a hard day. How about if I read more of The Secret Garden to you?”
“But don’t you want to hear about my new friend?”
“The movie star who ate an ostrich and rides a magic bike?”
“She might not really be a movie star. Maybe she’s a spy who—”
“Enough, Gracie,” he said, opening the book. “Now, where were we?”
He knew, though; he always knew. Grace smiled sleepily and murmured, “Colin is better.”
“Oh. Yeah,” Daddy said, turning to the right page and starting to read. “One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever…”
Grace popped her thumb into her mouth and listened to the music of her daddy’s voice.
* * *
“They yell at her, Scot. And she’s always alone. No one bothers to come out and play with her. Her only friend seems to be invisible.”