Saving Grapes - Madeline Kirby Page 0,66
forget that, okay? If you start putting things off or putting your own needs aside, remember what I said.”
“Do I do that?”
Steve stopped, and Ben turned back to meet his sharp gaze. “There was a time, when I first got here, that I was afraid you might.”
“And now?”
“There’s been a lot of changes going on here the last two months. The building is just part of it. Thom is finally open about himself, and you’ve got a relationship with your father. He looks happier now than he did when I got here. Even Mindy – try to find a way for her to stick around for a while if you can.”
“You don’t miss a thing.”
“Still got it all going on up here,” Steve said, tapping the side of his head with an index finger. “What I’m trying to say is, you’re not the same man you were two months ago. You’ve had to make a lot of choices and do a lot of growing up. You’re the kind of person who worries, and wants to take care of folks, and that’s not a bad thing. But you’ve got to remember to take care of you, too. Like on the plane, when they tell you to put your own oxygen mask on before helping others.”
Ben nodded. “I’ll remember.”
Chapter 22
SHORTLY BEFORE dinner, Ben went upstairs to check on Thom.
“Hey,” he whispered, leaning over to kiss Thom on the forehead. “You awake?”
“Barely.”
“Are you hungry? You want to come down for dinner?”
“Ngh.”
“Is that a yes or a no?”
Thom rubbed his eyes and focused on Ben. “Sorry. Coming up the stairs took more out of me than I expected.”
“Are you in pain?”
“No, actually. But I’m beat. Would it be too much trouble if I had dinner up here?”
“Not at all. I’ll bring a tray and we can eat up here. After dinner you can have a nice hot shower and we’ll make an early night of it.”
“Sounds perfect. Thank you.”
“Okay – dinner’ll be ready in about twenty minutes. I’ll be back.”
“Your granddad’s planning to head back to Arizona in the next week,” Ben told Thom as he put their dinner dishes back on the tray. When Thom didn’t respond, Ben looked over to see Thom biting his lower lip. “You okay?”
“Yeah. No. Damn, I’m gonna miss him, you know?”
“Me too. But he said if you were fit enough to do the stairs, we didn’t need him around. And I think it’s starting to get too cold for him now. Anyway, sleeping in the dining room can’t be comfortable when he’s used to having his own place.”
“That’s true. I just got used to having him around again. It was kind of fun, in a way, sharing a room with him. Once the worst of the pain was done and I didn’t feel like an invalid anymore.”
Ben sat on the bed next to Thom and put his arm around Thom’s shoulders, pulling him close. “Once you’re out of the sling and off the cane, and it’s really cold here, we’ll go visit him.”
“We?”
“Of course, we. In a way he’s my Granddad, too. I don’t know if you noticed, but we’ve all kind of bonded over the last couple of months. I hadn’t really noticed it until I talked to Steve today. But my dad, Steve, Mindy, me, we’re family now. More than just by blood. It’s like, when that lightning struck it turned us all to glass, and we had to fuse or break. So we fused.”
“Glass, huh?”
“Yeah. That first night you were in the hospital, God I was so scared. The doctor sent us home, but I couldn’t sleep. I spent the night reading about lightning online. There’s this thing lightning does when it strikes sand – the lightning is so hot and powerful it turns the sand to glass. It’s called a fulgurite. That was us. We all came together, and it’s gonna be hard when we have to separate.”
“Wow. That’s… it’s…”
“Sappy?”
“Humbling. I’ve been so focused on myself, I never gave a lot of thought to what was going on with everyone else. I knew everyone was working hard, and I felt bad about that. But I didn’t think about how stressful it must have been.”
Ben shrugged. “I guess it was. But it wasn’t all bad. It was great, in a way, being part of a team. We worked hard, but with everyone here chipping in, we made it work. And you did your part by focusing on getting better.”
“Still…”
“Nope. No brooding. I’m