“Daphne?" I walked up and down the hall of Grandpa’s apartment for the third time, shaking the box of cat treats and making kissy noises. "Daph, come out and eat!” The sound of fresh treats was usually a siren song to the little beast, but of course not today, because today I was in a hurry.

“Daphne, you are such a shithead,” I muttered under my breath as I crossed back into the kitchen and set the box on the counter.

“Language, Everett,” Grandpa Hen called from the living room and I rolled my eyes. His hearing was more acute than most men half his age, unless his doctor was delivering some warning about taking it easy on his recently un-casted leg, in which case Henry was conveniently deaf.

“You ready to go?” I asked, dusting off my khaki pants and rolling up the sleeves of my jacket as I entered the living room. “I told Silas we’d grab a table if we got to the diner before… Seriously?”

Grandpa was rocking in his favorite recliner with Daphne sprawled on his lap like a giant blanket, the white of her fur a perfect match to the hair on his face and his head. They both looked up when I walked in, and it was a tossup as to who looked more smug.

I folded my arms over my chest and gave them both a dirty look.

Daphne gave me the feline equivalent of an eye-roll, then lay back down like she couldn’t even with my drama, as the kids at school said. Grandpa shrugged and stroked a hand along her back.

“I thought she was a demon cat,” I challenged. “A tripping hazard? A menace?”

“Hush, Everett,” Grandpa admonished, holding Daphne protectively. “You’ll hurt her feelings.”

I gave him a slow blink. "Is this… reality?"

He hmphed. “Daphne and I have come to an understanding,” he said. “She has discerning taste just like I do, and neither of us likes our routines to be upset. Isn’t that right, sweet girl?” he cooed.

Daphne purred, right on cue.

“And just how did this unholy alliance form?” I demanded.

“Well, you haven’t been around very much the past few weeks,” he said. “Someone’s abandoned us, haven’t they Daphne? Someone got cozy with Silas and left us to our own devices, hmm?”

“Oh, please,” I sighed. “I’m still here working at the store almost every afternoon. I still sleep in my bed every night.”

“And why is that?”

“Why is what?”

“Why is it,” he repeated with ill-concealed impatience, scratching at Daphne’s ears, “that you spend part of almost every evening with Silas, but you come back here and sleep in your own bed?”

I stared at him as a thousand thoughts flew across my head, but what I said was, “Because you need me. Daphne needs me. I live here.”

Grandpa Hen eyed me skeptically. “I got my cast off last week. I’m lighter on my feet than you are these days. Daphne only needs someone to feed her and listen to her troubles, which she’s got.” He pointed to himself. “And even when you’re here, you ain’t really all the way here.”

I huffed and planted my hands on my hips. That was ludicrous.

“So I’m gonna ask you again, Ev. What are you doing with that boy?”

If he’d asked it in a judgmental way, or a teasing way, or even in a gossipy way, I would have been enraged. But instead, he asked it kindly, gently, with that tenderness that was still so new, coming from him, I didn’t know how to defend against it.

“I don’t know,” I said instead. It sounded bleak because it was.

“He in love with you?”

“It’s been a month, Grandpa.” I ran a hand through my hair and paced the narrow room.

“That s’posed to answer my question?”

“No. I… I don’t think he loves me.” But that wasn’t quite true, and my heart picked up speed at the question. There were times when Si looked at me and I thought I saw something in his eyes, or when he asked me a question that sounded like he was asking something else. I’d ignored it. Or tried to.

“You love him?” Grandpa asked, just like I’d known he would, and at this my heart skittered in my chest like a pebble thrown across a lake, shallow and uneven.

“No,” I whispered. “It’s not like that. It’s just… we’re just…”

“Friends with benefits?” he said sagely.

“Where the heck did you hear that phrase?”

He rolled his eyes. “We have internet here, Ev. As you know.”

Ev. It occurred to me belatedly that I’d never heard him call me by my nickname. Were we friends now, just like him and Daphne?

“I have a story I wanna tell you,” he said, sitting back comfortably.

“Grandpa, we really need to go.” I pointed lamely at the door that led downstairs.

“Then stop interrupting, so it can be a fast story,” he retorted. “And sit down. You’re making me nervous.”

I threw my head back and huffed a sigh at the ceiling, then flopped on the sofa.

“Your Grandma Anna and I,” he began.

“Oh, Grandpa, please. I do not want to hear how your relationship with Grandma Anna has anything to do with me and Silas.”

He hmphed. “It doesn’t have a goddamn thing to do with that, far as I know. I dropped a rock on her head when I was six and she was seven, she cried, and I kissed her so she wouldn’t tattle on me.” He smirked. “You’re a little old to be throwing rocks, Everett.”

I snorted. “Sorry. Tell me your story.”

“Well, like I was saying, I can’t remember a time when I was ever without her. Good or bad. I knew her way back when she was in pigtails, and she knew me when I was a brash young idiot who spoke before he thought…”

“Way back then?” I echoed, raising one eyebrow, and to my surprise, he laughed.

“That hasn’t changed, I’ll grant you.” His smile turned a little melancholy. “I loved her so long, I can’t even tell you when it started, Everett. She wasn’t just the love of my life, she was my life. Everything good in it, anyway. Gave me two daughters I’m proud of, made me a beautiful home, smiled at me every day in that way she had that made the day sunny even when it damn well wasn’t. You know?”

I thought of Silas, God help me, and I knew exactly what Grandpa meant. And then I felt a pang of guilt so acute I actually clutched my stomach because it should have been Adrian's face I saw. It should.

I was so fucked.

I'd thought I could do this thing with Silas without having it tear me up inside, but it turned out I couldn't. The last three weeks had been the most incredible of my life, but that didn’t negate the fact that I owed Adrian my loyalty. And the deeper things with Silas got, the guiltier I felt that I was forgetting him. Letting someone take his place.

I wasn't giving Silas what he needed.

I wasn't giving Adrian what he deserved.

And I was being split in two.

“When my Anna died, I was broken, Everett. God, I missed her so bad. Most of my life kept right on going — the shop, the bills, hunting in the fall and tending her roses in the spring, but there was no sunshine in it anymore for me.”

I nodded. I knew exactly what he meant. Exactly. I had vivid memories of being surrounded by a hundred Milky Way wrappers last Halloween, sick to my stomach and feeling like life would never be fun again.

And it hadn't been, really. Until Si.

“Then one day, I was pruning those damn plants and my knees ached something fierce… not that there’s anything wrong with my knees,” he assured me quickly.

“Right. Of course not.”

“And all of a sudden, I could hear your grandmother’s voice in my ear, like she was standing right beside me. Henry, she said, I love you and I always will.”

I bit my lip and frowned, remembering how I’d once wanted Adrian to haunt me. It felt like I hadn't thought that in a long time.

“And then she said, But you’re a damn fool, tending these roses when you never gave a shit about roses in your life.”

I shook my head, sure I'd misheard. “What?”

Grandpa smiled softly. “She was a practical woman, my Anna. And somehow, I’d gotten so caught up in sentimentality, I’d forgotten that. She wouldn’t want me kneeling down and worshipping those rose bushes for the rest of my days. She’d have laughed herself silly to see me. I didn’t have to love what she loved in order to love her, and I didn’t have to keep living the life we’d lived together once she was gone.” He hesitated. “That’s partly why, after I broke my leg, I asked your mom to send you to me. I thought maybe you were stuck in a rut after losing your husband, same as I was after losing your grandmother.”

“You asked Mom to send me?” I narrowed my eyes. “But I thought…”

“That I didn’t care about you? I don’t know where you get your fool ideas, Ev. It’s true that your grandma was more the kind, caring one of the two of us, but I’ve loved you since the day you were born.”

“But you’ve never approved of me,” I said, too shocked to keep my mouth shut. “It was always Ev being too high-strung, or Ev being too artistic. You didn’t approve of me being gay.”

“Artists have a terrible lot in life,” he sighed. “No stability. No money. No pension, even when someone's as talented as you are. And I don’t give a shit who you love, Everett, but being gay’s a hard row to hoe, too. Gotta fight at every turn.” Grandpa shook his head. “Maybe I shoulda wished the world were different, not you. But if I ever tried to change you, it wasn’t because I didn’t love you. It was because I loved you too much.”

“How have you seen my art?”

“Told you I have the internet,” he said reasonably. “Your mom sends me pictures.”

I gaped at him. “You didn’t come to my wedding,” I protested.

He hesitated, looking down at his hands as they settled on Daphne’s head. “I don’t know what you’d’ve wanted me there for anyway. Not like I knew any of your city friends or anything. Not like you’d ever brought Adrian to visit me.”

“Because I thought you wouldn’t want me to.”

“Well, then you thought wrong, son. I’d’ve been proud to be introduced to the man you loved.”

I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes as tears threatened. I hadn’t cried as much in my entire nearly-thirty-years of life as I had in the past two months.

Grandpa cleared his throat and carried on as if we hadn’t just had a moment.

“Anyway, after that business with the rose bushes, I decided to put the house on the market and move here to town. And you know what? You grandmother moved with me.” His lip quirked, like he was remembering. “I make coffee in that tiny kitchen back there and think of her. And I hear her voice when I’m adding numbers downstairs. Sometimes I hear her in my ear when I’m talking to you, telling me to be patient and that people don’t always know what’s going on in my head when I say things.” He smiled.

“Clearly,” I muttered. I’d been so wrong. As wrong as Silas ever was, and I wanted to tell him so.

“But the point is, Everett, I loved her. And she’s inside me. I can’t ever forget her or stop loving her. It’s carved deep in my bones, and they’ll find it when I die: Henry Lattimer loves Anna Lattimer. Forever and ever. No matter where I go, or what I do, or who else I love.”

I sniffled and blew out a breath. “That’s really beautiful,” I said. “Thank you for telling me that.”

He scoffed. “Don’t be a dummy. I don’t say things just to hear myself talk, Ev. You think about what I said.”

I frowned and nodded. “I will.” But honestly, I was still stuck back on him loving me, approving of me.

Grandpa grunted and grabbed his cane from the side table. “Time to get up, Highness,” he told the cat. “We’ve got breakfast plans.” Daphne yawned prettily and stretched like she understood.

“Adrian used to call her that,” I said. “Highness.” I smiled. “He was the one who rescued her, you know.”

“I didn’t know that,” Grandpa said. He looked at me and nodded. “You should tell me more about him. Sometime.”

I nodded and I meant it. The tight knot of Adrian inside me was loosening, I could feel it, but it felt strangely like by letting go of the stranglehold on my memories, I was giving them new life. Maybe I didn’t have to be the only one who remembered him anymore.

Grandpa pushed himself to his feet with the cane, then regarded it for a moment, like he wasn’t sure whether he should take it with him or not.

“I think canes are badass,” I remarked, like I hadn’t noticed his dilemma. “A good weapon, in a pinch.”

He grunted again, but leaned on the cane as he crossed the room to the stairs.

“My hair tidy?” he asked, pausing at the top.

“Yeah, great. Why?”

“You never know who you might see when you’re out and about, Everett. Always want to look your best.”

“Uh huh. Diane Perkins working at Goode’s today?” I asked.

“Diane works most every Saturday,” he answered blandly, beginning a cautious descent. “Best cook they have.”

“You ever gonna tell me what’s going on with you two?”

He snorted. “‘Bout when you tell me what’s going on with you and Silas.”

“I already told you… I don’t know.”

“Well, I don’t know what’s doing with me and Diane, either.” He hesitated. “You wanna know the truth, Everett?”

“No, lie to me.”

He ignored me. “Truth is, I was fixing to… to court her. To date her, as the kids say.”

As the kids say. I shook my head as I followed slowly down the stairs behind him. “What went wrong?”

“I broke… I mean, bruised… my fool leg.”

“So what?”

“So the poor woman ended up taking care of me, that’s what.” He shook his head and paused with his hand on the railing to look up at me. “Don’t wanna be a burden on anyone. And that’s just what I told her when I told her to stop coming around to see me.”

“You told her that?”

He sighed. “You may not have noticed, but the woman’s a good bit younger than I am. Fourteen years.”

“I noticed.”

“Don’t want her tied down to me, taking care of me forever.”

“But you care about her, don’t you? And she cares about you, otherwise she wouldn’t have kept bringing you dinner all the time and blushing whenever you say something nice about her.”

He clomped down to the bottom step and opened the door. “Yep. Goes to show, you haven’t cornered the market on idiocy, Everett.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He turned around once he reached the sidewalk and lifted a hand to my shoulder. His green eyes were serious as they met mine. “It means when a good person loves you, Everett, you don’t turn your back on it. You don’t let your pride or your fear hold you back.”

“That’s not what’s happening with me and Silas.” It wasn’t. It wasn’t fear or pride that held me back, it was… it was loyalty. A totally different thing.

“Of course not.” Grandpa Hen sighed. “Well, one thing’s for sure, you’re a Lattimer through and through.” He clapped me on the shoulder and turned toward the diner. “No one can ever say we did anything the easy way.”

I frowned and followed him as he opened the glass door of the restaurant.

The diner was packed this morning, its bacon-and-coffee-deliciousness spilling out onto the street along with the noise of two dozen O’Learians chattering away.

I recognized most of them already, oddly enough, and I lifted my hand to return wave after wave as my students and their parents, and O’Leary Hardware patrons, and people I recognized from the Pumpkin Festival meeting a few weeks back, all greeted me by name.

I was starting to think I enjoyed the aggressive O’Leary friendliness.

“Hey!” Silas said, standing up as Grandpa Hen approached. Si and Dare had gotten a table in the center of the diner, right between Frank and Myrna Lucano’s table and the table where Jamie Burke, Julian Ross, and Julian's brother Constantine were sitting.

I greeted Dare as Grandpa shook Si’s hand. Hen’s annoyance with Silas had disappeared about an hour after I’d come home from Silas’s house the first night. “Good to see you smiling, Everett,” was all he’d said, but the next time Si’s name had come up in conversation, he’d smiled and nodded.

After Grandpa sat, Si turned to me. His blue eyes were so warm when they met mine, and I could see by the way he looked at my lips that he wanted to kiss me hello.

I stuck out my hand and watched the light in his eyes dim just a little as he shook it and sat back down.

Fuck. Every interaction with Si was fraught with emotional landmines and I didn’t know how to navigate my way through them without blowing something up. I knew how Silas felt about commitment, especially about parading it around O’Leary. It meant something that he wanted to kiss me, even just a peck on the lips in the middle of a crowded diner, and I wasn’t sure if I could handle that. It wasn’t fair to let Silas proclaim something when I couldn’t follow through.

And yeah, it also wasn’t fair to keep leading Si on in private, if that’s what I was doing. But he’d said we could take things slow, and I… I just didn’t want to give him up.

“Morning, Ev, Henry,” Diane said. She pulled a pen from behind her ear and her order pad from the little apron at her waist. “What’ll it be this morning?”

“Pancakes, please,” I said. “Bacon and coffee, too.”

She nodded. “Sure thing, honey. Henry, what'll it be?”

He looked startled. “You never ask, you usually just bring me something you know I'll like.”

She lifted one eyebrow. “Maybe today you could just tell me, rather than me trying to figure it out.”

Dare coughed. “Omelet special sounded good, Henry,” he offered.

“What? No! I don’t want the omelet special,” Hen said obstinately. “I want what I usually have.”

“I can’t remember,” Diane said, tilting her head. “If you want something, tell me.”

His moustache quivered. “Fine, then. Pancakes and bacon, same as Everett,” he said a moment later. “Please.”

Diane lifted her chin and walked off.

“What the devil got into her?” Hen asked the table.

“She seemed fine to me,” Si said brusquely. “Sometimes it gets frustrating trying to figure out what people want.”

I could practically hear him grinding his teeth and I sighed internally.

“Morning, Everett! Hen, how are you feeling?” Shane said strolling over to our table to clap Grandpa on the back after dropping off food for Myrna and Frank.

“‘Bout as well as a person can when other folks are upset at them for no reason,” Grandpa complained.

Shane frowned in confusion. “Well, I know something that’ll cheer you up. Karen Mitchener- Martin, Angela Ross, and Ms. Dorian were in here earlier, and they said there’s been a break in Elliot Marks’s disappearance. You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

“What?” Si and Dare demanded in unison. The conversations around us grew quiet.

I winced. Just hearing Karen’s name was enough to make me itchy these days. The woman hadn’t stopped speculating and accusing people since the day Elliot Marks went missing, and more than once I’d heard Maura at Fanaille say she couldn’t wait until Karen had her baby, so she’d be too busy to interfere in other folks’ lives.

“Well, Ms. Dorian said there was a camera outside a store near Elliot’s apartment building,” Shane said, eyeing Si warily. I couldn’t really blame him. “Showed a tall, blond guy walking in, and that’s the suspect. She said it was obviously that new guy, Daniel Whatever.”

I stared at him. “Are you sure?”

Shane shrugged.

Julian leaned over from the next table. “Excuse me. Did you say they’re accusing Daniel Michaelson of being involved in the disappearance?”

“No.” Si shook his head vigorously.

“Nobody's accusing anyone of anything,” Dare said, holding up his hands. “Karen Mitchener-Martin's spreading rumors. Again.”

“I heard he lives in the woods because he’s not right in the head,” an older man I’d never met yelled from one of the booths.

“I heard he came here because he got into trouble with the law and he was on the run,” Myrna Lucano said, frowning. "But he seems real sweet."

“I think that’s a load of horseshit.” An older woman with graying blonde hair stood up from one of the tables in the back. She was sturdy and ruddy-complected, with deep-set laugh lines around her eyes. “Daniel Michaelson helped me work on one of my sculptures the other day. He’s a good man.”

“Christ alive, Rena Cobb, don’t you tell me that he was modeling for you!” Kelley Dwyer, one of my student’s parents said, sounding horrified.

“Modeling for me? ‘Course not. He’s helping me with the pride flag sculpture in the front yard.”

Silas blinked, momentarily distracted. “Did you say… it’s a pride flag?”

“Sure,” she said easily. “Rainbow colored stripes, like trees growing up from the ground. What else would it be?”

Si looked at me and shook his head in disbelief.

“Nothing,” he said, at the same time Jay Turner, one of Grandpa Hen’s cronies, yelled, “They thought it was a buncha dicks, Rena.”

Rena tilted her head to the side, then nodded. “I mean, I can see why you’d think that. If you’d never seen a dick before.”

Her words surprised a laugh out of me that made Grandpa scowl in my direction.

“Listen to me, everyone,” Julian Ross said, standing up from his breakfast. He was cute, in a small, dark-haired, youthful sort of way. “Daniel Michaelson didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“We know, Julian,” Jamie said. “It’s alright.”

“I wanna know how he knows that!” someone yelled.

“Yeah, how do you know that, Doc Ross?” Kelley asked.

Julian’s face burned. “I know, because…I know because… Daniel was with me the night Elliot Marks went missing.”

“What?” His brother Constantine stared up at him in disbelief. “With you?”

“Yeah,” Julian said. “We’re, um… together.”

“Since when?” Constantine demanded. “I didn’t even know he was gay!”

“Maybe because it’s none of your business,” Julian retorted.

"Damn," Constantine said. “Mom is going to freak out.”

Julian’s face burned hotter. “I’m… I’ve gotta go,” he stuttered, throwing money down on the table.

“Julian!” Silas called. “Daniel’s not in trouble!”

But Julian either didn’t hear him or didn’t care. He was already out the door, with Constantine jogging after him.

“Well, that was damn entertaining,” Grandpa Hen told Shane. “What’ve you got planned for an encore?”

Shane scowled out the door at Julian, looking almost petulant. “Why’d he have to go and do that?” Shane said.

“Do what?” Jamie asked. “Speak up? I noticed the way Julian and Daniel were looking at each other at the meeting the other night.”

“Same here,” I said. “They had chemistry. I’m not surprised they’re together, and if he cares about the man, it just makes sense that he spoke up.”

“Does it?” Si said, so low that only I could hear.

God. I felt my heart tear a little bit more.

“I just wanted everyone to stop worrying,” Shane said, frowning. The poor guy looked lost and young, although I knew he had to be around thirty since he and Molly had dated.

“I know, Shane,” Silas said. “I appreciate that. But it’d be best if you didn’t spread any more of Karen’s stories, alright? It just works people into a panic.”

Shane frowned and nodded. “Sorry, Si.”

“Well, we have some news,” Frank said, leaning over to Silas. He laid his hand on Myrna’s and squeezed, looking at her affectionately. “We decided you were right, Silas. We’re giving up the fight against the eminent domain case. We’re going to stop fighting and focus on finding peace instead.”

“What?” I said. “Really?” I couldn’t lie, I was a little sad to hear it, for their sakes.

“Really,” Myrna said. She hesitated, then shrugged. “No sense trying to keep a secret in this town. I found out last week I have cancer. Nothing too serious, hopefully. I’ll be around to keep this one on his toes for a good while longer.” She winked at Frank. “But it was enough of a scare for us to realize what’s important.”

“Family,” Frank said, his white curls bobbing. “Friends. Each other.”

Myrna nodded. “Enjoying the land, whoever owns it. And the time we have together.”

“But no! No, that was Molly’s place,” Shane said. His face crumpled. “Up by the falls. I go up there to think about it.” He looked to Jamie like he needed assistance. “Molly would be so upset if she knew they were gonna tear down all those trees!”

“I know, Shane. I know. She loved it up there.” Jamie stood and braced a hand on his shoulder. “They’re not destroying anything. It’s just changing hands, is all.”

Frank and Myrna exchanged a look. “It’ll be alright, Shane. Nothing’s going to happen until next spring. There’ll be time to get accustomed to the idea.”

“Silas,” Shane said. “Silas, your brother liked it up there almost as much as Molly. You remember? They were out there all the damn time. All the time, even when they were supposed to be studying. Sometimes even when she was supposed to be with me. You remember?”

Si’s face was locked in grief and sympathy. "Yeah, Shane. I remember. But…” He broke off helplessly.

I stretched my hand across the table and laid my hand over Silas’s, much the way Frank had with Myrna’s, and gave it a comforting squeeze. Si shot me a grateful look. He twisted his hand beneath mine and laced our fingers together.

“Wait.” Shane’s eyes widened in surprise. He straightened and sniffed, like he’d been shocked out of his distress. “Are you two… together?”

I took a deep breath. “Yeah,” I said softly. Mostly. Sort of. My stomach churned, but Silas’s smile made it all worthwhile.

“But I thought you were married, Ev,” Shane said, frowning in confusion.

The simple words were like the lash of a whip across my sensitive heart and I flinched mentally and physically. I detangled my fingers from Si’s and folded my hands beneath the table.

“Widowered,” I said softly. “He died.”

“Oh.” Shane shrugged. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No,” Grandpa Hen said sharply. “No, young man, it’s damn well not. And you know better.”

“Sorry, Henry,” Shane said. “I don’t mean to offend you. It’s just… Molly and I never got the chance to get married, but I can’t imagine loving anyone but her for the rest of my life.” He sounded proud and so unbearably young, even though he had to be a few years older than me. “If it’s real love, it lasts forever, and you never give up on it. Right?”

“You don’t have to give up on it to love someone else, Shane.” Hen’s jaw set. “Some folks have the capacity to love more than one person in their lifetime. Some folks think loving someone else is the best way to honor the ones we’ve lost. In fact…”

He leaned on his cane and stood up from the table, his eyes fixed on Diane, who was across the room refilling coffee from a carafe.

“Diane?” Grandpa Hen called.

Diane spun and frowned. “Yes?”

“I’ve been too proud to ask you what I should have asked you a long time ago,” Hen said. “Can I take you out to dinner tonight?”

Diane’s jaw dropped and her face turned as red as her hair. “Well, I… I mean…” She swallowed. “Yes, Henry. I think I’d like that very much.”

Grandpa beamed and glanced down at me, as if to say, And that is how it’s done, Ev.