inoperable. I don’t think even my mother would exaggerate that. He’s going to die, Ross.”
Ross felt sucker-punched by the words. For a few seconds, he couldn’t breathe or see straight. There had to be some mistake. A month ago, Ross had received the usual communiqué from his grandfather. George Bellamy had a curiously old-fashioned style of writing, even with e-mail, starting each message with a proper heading and salutation. He had mentioned the Mayo Clinic—"nothing to worry about.” Ross had failed to read between the lines. He hadn’t let himself go there, even though he knew damn well a guy didn’t go to the Mayo Clinic for a hangnail. He hadn’t let himself think about…sweet Jesus…a terminal prognosis.
Granddad’s sign-off was always the same: Keep Calm and Carry On.
And that, in essence, was the way George Bellamy lived. Apparently it was the way he was going to die.
“He finally told my dad,” Ivy was saying. There was still a catch in her voice. “He said he wasn’t going to pursue further treatment.”
“Is he scared?” Ross asked. “Is he in pain?”
“He’s just…Granddad. He claimed he had to go to some little town in the Catskills to see his brother. That was the first I’d heard of any brother. Did you know anything about that?”
“Wait a minute, what? Granddad has a brother?”
The connection crackled ominously, and he missed the first part of her reply. “…anyway, when my mother heard what he was planning, she went, like, totally ballistic.”
Fighting the poor connection and the ambient din of the airport, Ross listened as his cousin filled him in further. Their grandfather had called each of his three sons—Trevor, Gerard and Louis—and he’d calmly informed them of the diagnosis. Then, like a follow-up punch, George had announced his intention to leave his Manhattan penthouse and head for a backwater town upstate to see his brother, some guy named Charles Bellamy. Like Ivy and Ross, most people in the family didn’t even know he had a long-lost brother. How could he have a brother nobody knew about? Was he some guy hidden away in an asylum somewhere, like in the movie Rain Man? Or was he a figment of Granddad’s increasingly unreliable imagination?
“So you are telling me he’s headed upstate with some sketchy woman who is…who, again?” he asked.
“Her name is Claire Turner. Claims to be some kind of nurse or home health worker. My mom—and yours, too, I’m sure—thinks she’s after his money.”
That would always be the first concern of Aunt Alice and of his mother, Ross reflected. Though Bellamys only by marriage, they claimed to love George like a father. And maybe they did, but Ross suspected Alice’s tantrum was less about losing her father-in-law than it was about splitting her inheritance. He also had no doubt his mother felt the same way. But that was a whole other conversation.
“And they called the police to stop her,” Ivy added.
“The police?” Ross shoved a hand through his close-cropped hair. He realized he’d raised his voice again and turned away. “They called the police?” Holy crap. Apparently his mother and aunt had managed to persuade the local authorities that George was with a stranger who meant him harm.
“They didn’t know what else to do,” said Ivy. “Listen, Ross. I’m so worried about Granddad. I’m scared. I don’t want him to suffer. I don’t want him to die. Please come home, Ross. Please—”
“I requested an expedited discharge,” he assured her. So far, the promised out-processing hadn’t given him much of a head start.
His cousin acted as though his homecoming was going to bring about a miraculous cure for their grandfather. Ross already knew miracles weren’t reliable. “When are you flying to New York?” he asked, but by then he was speaking to empty air; the connection had been lost. He shut the mobile phone and brought it over to Manny Shiraz, a fellow chief warrant officer who had lent it to him when Ross’s phone had failed.
“Trouble at home?” Manny asked. It was the kind of question that came up for guys on deployment, again and again.
Ross nodded. “God forbid I should go home and find everything is fine.”
“Welcome to the club, Chief.”
The idyllic homefront was usually a myth, yet everybody in the waiting area was amped up about going back. There were men and women who hadn’t seen their families in a year, some even longer than that. Babies had been born, toddlers had taken their first steps, marriages had crumbled, holidays had passed, loved ones had died, birthdays had been celebrated. Everyone was eager to get back to their lives.
Ross was eager, too—but he didn’t have much of a life. No wife and kids counting the hours to his return. Just his mother, Winifred, a flighty and self-absorbed woman…and Granddad.
George Bellamy had been the touchstone of Ross’s life since the moment a Casualty Assistance Calls Officer had knocked at the door, arriving in person to tell Winifred Bellamy and her son that Pierce Bellamy had been killed during Operation Desert Storm in 1994.
Granddad had flown to New York from Paris on the Concorde, which was still operating in those days. He had traveled faster than the speed of sound to be with Ross. He’d pulled his grandson into his arms, and the two of them had cried together, and Granddad had made a promise that day: I will always be here for you.
They had clung to each other like survivors of a tsunami. Ross’s mother all but disappeared into a whirlwind of panicked grief that culminated in a feverish round of dating. Winifred recovered from her loss quickly and decisively, sealing the deal by remarrying and adopting two stepkids, Donnie and Denise. Ross had been shipped off to school in Switzerland because he had difficulty “accepting” his stepfather and his charming stepbrother and stepsister. The American School in Switzerland offered a comprehensive residential educational program. His mother convinced herself that the venerable institution would do a better job raising her son than she herself ever could.
Ross’s grief had been so raw and painful he couldn’t see straight. Sometimes he wanted to ask her, “In what world is it okay to look at a kid who’d just lost his father and say to him, ‘Boarding school! It’s just the thing for you!’?”
Then again, maybe her instincts had been right. There were students at TASIS who thrived on the experience—a residential school as magical in its way as Hogwarts itself. He hadn’t known it back then, but maybe the long separations and periods of isolation had helped prepare him for deployment.
Being sent an ocean away after losing his dad could have pushed him over the edge, but there was one saving grace in his situation—Granddad. He’d been living and working in Paris and he visited Ross at school in Lugano nearly every single weekend, a lifeline of compassion. Granddad probably didn’t realize it, but he’d saved Ross from drowning. He shut his eyes, picturing his grandfather—impressively tall, with abundant white hair. He’d never seemed old to Ross, though.
On the eve of his deployment, Ross had made a promise to his grandfather. “I’m coming back.”
Granddad had not had the expected reaction. He’d turned his eyes away and said, “That’s what your father told me.” It was a negative thing to say, especially for Granddad. Ross knew the words came from fear that he’d never make it home.
He paced, feeling constrained
