“The ability to make your own choices.” Then she added, “Darling boy of my heart.” Surely the time had finally come when he’d respond with an equally flowery endearment. Right? She waited expectantly as he typed.

Can you turn the TV back up?

Laughing, she did so.

Fifteen minutes later, Tess and Rudy appeared at the door.

Leah beckoned them forward and they bustled inside, full of concerned questions and sympathy. The older couple had made it here even before Dylan’s friends, who had phones permanently grafted to their hands.

“Buddy!” Rudy gripped Dylan’s shoulder. His glasses were askew. His chin quivered. “We were so frightened when we heard. Are you all right?”

Dylan nodded.

Rudy carefully hugged him.

Tess straightened Dylan’s blankets and hair, her lips tight. That subtle sign was a giveaway. It informed Leah that seeing Dylan, injured and lying in a hospital bed, was supremely difficult for Tess.

“What do you need?” Rudy asked. “I’ll go get it for you. Pizza? Cheez-Its? Gatorade? One of those really big cups of Coke?” He held his hands about a yard apart to indicate the Coke’s size. “You name it.”

“Rudy.” Tess heaved an exasperated sigh. “We don’t yet know how Dylan is receiving his nutrition, since he has a tube in his throat. Nor can we offer food and drinks his doctors might have forbidden him to have.”

Rudy winked at Dylan. “If you want a giant Coke, I’ll get you one.”

“Rudy!”

A nurse had left paper and a pen on Dylan’s bed tray. He pulled the tray closer and wrote, Thanks, but I’m good right now. I’m glad you’re here.

“Leah?” Tess asked. “May I have a word?”

Leah followed her into the sterile-smelling hallway.

“Thank you for contacting us,” Tess said.

“You’re welcome.”

“Rudy and I will stay here with him if you need to take a break. Or go home and get some of his things.”

“I don’t plan to go anywhere for the rest of the day. In fact, I’m wearing work-out clothes, so I’ll just sleep here on the futon.”

“When will you be making a trip home?”

“In the morning?”

“We’ll come back then to relieve you.” Tess captured a renegade strand of gray hair and forced it behind her ear. “Today must have been awful for you.”

“It was. I watched him struggle to breathe. I . . . thought he might die.”

Today, Leah had glimpsed what the world might have been like if death had stolen her brother. Now she could understand a glimmer of what Tess must have felt when death had stolen her son and what Sebastian must have felt when death had stolen his mother.

Tess took hold of Leah’s hand, and the comfort only grandmothers can provide flowed from Tess to Leah.