“It’ll be here before you know it,” I responded.
We chatted for a few more minutes before the noise of the kids took her away, and I headed back to the house. I fully expected to find Grams in the kitchen with the half a cup of coffee Hannah had reduced her to per Cassidy’s instructions, but the house was silent.
That was when my heart started to thud an anxious tune.
I dropped my coat and headed up the stairs. I knocked on her door, but she didn’t answer. When I opened it, the scent of peppermint filled the air. Grams always had the red-and-white candies or the peppermint oils from Nash’s company with her. She said it soothed her nerves as much as her stomach.
As I entered, she didn’t budge, and it hit me how still she was lying. Her back was to the door, and she was buried under a bundle of blankets. Layers of them. Ever since the heart attack, she couldn’t seem to stay warm even when we turned the thermostat up.
My hands were shaking as I moved around the bed to her?not just my hands, my entire body. But it was my heart that was shaking the most.
“Grams?” I called softly, not wanting to startle her.
When I got to her side of the bed, her face was smoother than I’d seen it in years. Almost as if some of the wrinkles had been absorbed back into her skin. Her eyes were shut, and her mouth was slightly parted. She was on her side, arms curled up in front of her beneath the blanket.
“Grams?” I reached out to tap her shoulder.
Nothing.
“Grams!”
Panic. Pure panic. I reached for her wrist to find her heartbeat. She was stiff and cold.
Oh God.
No.
Please, no.
“Grams!”
Her body was rigid as I tried to move it again.
She was gone.
She’d been gone for hours, and I hadn’t known.
Thank God I hadn’t let Hannah come in.
My brain traveled through all those thoughts and then back to my grandmother whom I loved with a huge chunk of my heart. The heart that had already lost so much. How could the universe take her from me too?
The heart attack had been scary enough.
This.
This was unbearable.
I sank to the floor, forehead to the bed, and the tears started. I knew they wouldn’t stop for hours. I knew that, no matter how much I fought them, my body would demand their release.
“Grams. What the hell am I going to do now?” I sobbed.
I sat there for a long time. Minutes. Days. Hours. It all blended. Then, I pulled my phone from my pocket and called 9-1-1. The sirens from the fire station down the street came almost immediately. We were so close to downtown that their sound echoed through the house.
My brain whirled. She’d died in her sleep, and I hadn’t known.
Guilt mixed in with the pain swirling through me as I walked down the stairs to open the door for the emergency responders.
On the porch, I dialed my mom.
