“Sometimes we’d just sit there for a long while and neither one of us would say anything,” Gramps said. “And you know what I got to thinking about in the quiet of that room? If all of it hadn’t happened, even the way it did, then I really wouldn’t have had the life I’ve had. I probably never would have met your grandmother, son. We wouldn’t have had your dad, even if we didn’t have him nearly long enough. And I never would have been blessed enough to have your mom in my life.”

“Thank you,” Lucas’s mom said.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

Gramps turned and looked at Lucas now and said, “And I sure wouldn’t have had you in my life.”

Day after day, he said, he’d sit next to Tommy Angelo’s bed. Sometimes Tommy’s wife was there, sometimes not. Mostly it was just the two of them, with Gramps sharing most of the memories because Tommy wasn’t able.

“When it was happening,” Gramps said, “to all of us, you thought you’d never forget any of it. But by the end, Tommy had forgotten most of it. Which maybe was another blessing.”

One day last week he was holding Tommy’s hand when he closed his eyes, and the hand fell away, and Gramps knew he was gone.

He stayed around to help Tommy’s wife with the funeral details. She asked him to speak at the funeral, but Gramps politely told her no.

“I told her I’d already said what I came out there to say,” he said.

“What was that?” Lucas said to his grandfather.

“ ‘I forgive you,’ ” Gramps said.

THIRTY-THREE

Lucas would try to explain it later to his mom, how the minute Gramps walked through the front door, he was so glad he was back, it wiped out so much of what had been ripping him up inside since his dad’s letter had fallen out of that book.

He didn’t know if that meant he’d forgiven him. But it was like Gramps said: When he’d found out about Ocean State, he thought he’d think about it every day for the rest of his own life.

Now he was just glad that his grandfather was safe. He was safe, and he was back.

Before he went to bed his mom would say, “Priorities have a way of changing, kiddo. And can I tell you something? It won’t be the last time that happens to you.”

Before Gramps left, Lucas had tried to catch him up on what had happened with the Wolves while he’d been gone. The big thing, he said, was that he wouldn’t let Ryan quit against the Pelicans.

“Sometimes a good teammate has to tell somebody something they don’t want to hear,” Gramps said.