“It doesn’t make you miss her too much?” I ask, thinking now not only of Mom but of Macy too, wondering if that’s why she hasn’t wanted to tell me too much about her mother.

“In a way, but . . .” He stops walking as we come to a clearing, and there’s a little pond in the center. He sits down carefully on top of a fallen tree trunk and I hop up next to him while we watch the ripples in the water. “I’d rather remember her, even if it makes me miss her too. I suppose it makes me feel like she’s not so far away when I tell stories about her.”

“Makes sense,” I say, but he’s staring off, like he’s looking far into the sky beyond the outline of trees way on the other side of the pond, and I’m not sure he heard me.

“Remember her while I can,” he says quietly.

While he can.

“Gramps?”

I say his name in place of the question I don’t know how to ask. Quiet stretches out between us, and I need to break up the silence.

“Are you disappointed in me? I mean, because I made up the story about the poster? Are you going to tell Moms?”

“I could never be disappointed in you, not when your heart is in the right place. Grown-ups don’t know everything,” he continues. “Sometimes it seems like the older we get, the more we forget to lead with our hearts. When your heart is in the right place, that’s what really counts, isn’t it?”

“I . . . I think so,” I answer.

“I think so too,” he agrees. “And I think your Dewey is a lot like our Marshmallow: deserving of a second chance.”

“So you’ll talk to Moms about it?” I ask, hearing the hope in my voice.

“You just leave it to me,” he says, not fully answering my question.

I want to ask him what he means by that, but he’s staring off into the distance like he’s deep in thought again—maybe wandering into another memory—and so I just sit there next to him listening to the sounds of the wind in the leaves, the small scurrying footsteps of squirrels, and the birds calling back and forth to one another.

Gramps shakes his head slightly, breaking his concentration, and then he looks down at me and pats the log we’re sitting on.

“You know, I like this spot,” he says, looking around like it’s only now that he’s fully seeing the landscape surrounding us.

“I do too,” I tell him, happy to have him back from wherever his mind had taken him. “Moms won’t ever let me go into the woods by myself.”

“They’re right—but,” he says excitedly, “you’re not alone if you’re with me.”

I nod.