toward him. “Grady, would you like to show your brother around outside?”
Grady looked at Graham and said, “I’ve been working outside, you know, to keep my hands busy. Would you like to see what I made?”
“Of course!” The brothers stood and followed the nurse to the side door. She unlocked it and held it open.
“I’ll be behind you, but you’ll have privacy.”
“Babysitters everywhere,” Grady mumbled to Graham.
“Think of the end prize, Grady. She’s here to protect you from everything out there that’s trying to take you down.”
“And who protects me when I leave?” Grady asked.
The question gave Graham pause. What did happen to people who still needed help after their ninety days in rehab? Surely three months wasn’t enough time to cure a fifteen-year addiction. “I’m not sure, but we’ll figure it out when the time comes.”
Grady led Graham to a rock formation. The stacked thin pieces of slate were formed into an archway. “I did this.”
“Wait, what?” Graham asked in shock. “How?”
Grady shrugged. “We can take classes. There wasn’t really one I wanted to take, so my therapist signed me up for this gardening thing, and the instructor showed me how to put the rocks together.”
“This is amazing.”
“Thanks.” Grady’s smile beamed brightly. “If I continue to do well, I can teach people how to tie flies.”
“When is the last time you tied one?”
Grady thought for a moment. “Probably a week before Austin died, but I’ve been practicing.”
“They give you hooks?”
“No, they’re these plastic things. Works the same.”
“That’s great, Grady.”
Grady led his brother down the stone path until they came to a koi pond. They sat on the bench, both watching the fish swim around and the water cascade over the edge of the statue to create a waterfall.
“I was surprised to see Rennie in my hospital room.”
“She wanted to be there. She spent the first weekend you were in a coma at the hospital with Mom and me. As soon as the police showed up, she intervened and told them you had a lawyer. She’s the one who set everything up to get you this help and try to keep you out of jail.”
“How come you never married her? Or the one I met the time I visited?”
What a loaded question that was. Graham could make up some story and tell his brother how sometimes things didn’t always work out, or he could tell him the truth. Graham sighed, kicked his feet out in front of him, and relaxed against the bench. If he was going to do this, he was going to be comfortable.
“Monica, she’s the one you met. After Austin’s funeral, I went back to Cali and asked her to move to Cape Harbor with me. She said no, and I really couldn’t blame her. As far as Rennie goes, up until Brooklyn’s return, I hadn’t seen or heard from her. Found out she’s been living in Seattle for some time but kept her distance out of respect for Brooklyn.”
“You should’ve stayed in California, Graham.”
“Hindsight, Grady. It’s a beautiful thing.”
Grady chuckled. “Hindsight . . . what if I stopped Austin? How different would things be now?”
Graham was a master at the what-if game. “Okay, let’s play this game,” he told Grady. They had nothing but time to waste, so why not? “Let’s say that night never happens. I stay in California, marry Monica. We probably have kids, and I probably work fifty to sixty hours a week.”
“Or?” Grady responded.
Graham laughed. “You’re sadistic. Or, Monica and I don’t work out, and I marry Rennie.”
“Option two sounds more like it. I never understood why the two of you weren’t together.”
Graham didn’t know, either, but their future looked promising. “Yeah,” Graham sighed. “Now, to you. Where do you think you’d be?”
Grady shrugged. “Right before the accident, I was going to ask Monroe if she wanted to go out on a date.”
“She cares about you, Grady.”
“I don’t want her to. She needs to move on and stop trying to fix me.”
Easier said than done, Graham thought. “You can tell her,” Graham said. “I don’t want to have anything to do with that conversation.”
Grady laughed. “She’s persistent, and I love her as a friend, but she’s the past, and I don’t want to keep living in the past.”
Grady’s words gave Graham pause. Was that what he was doing with Rennie? Living in the past? Trying to rekindle what they had because it was good then? He hadn’t thought about it, but it made sense. He knew nothing of her life now other