“Hey, Mom’s up now. No more snickering about her grace handicap.”
Two heads turned my way as I wandered out of the hall. Grant gave me a look that made my heart stop, right before it made it take off. Charlie just beamed through her bite of cereal.
“Why are you in Dad’s bathrobe?” she asked, inspecting the oversized robe swallowing me. “Is it because you couldn’t find your clothes? Because I found them in here. I found Dad’s too.” She pointed at the pile of clothes she’d collected, like it was a scene of a crime. “You wouldn’t believe where I found his pants.”
Biting my lip, I stared at the floor as I kept moving closer. Actually, I would believe it. I remembered exactly where I’d tossed them once I tore them off of him.
“Thanks for picking them up for us. That was thoughtful,” I said, trying to sound like the mature, responsible adult I was not feeling like at the moment.
“When I woke up and didn’t find you in your bed, I figured you’d be out here.” Her legs started swinging from her perch on her dad’s lap. She was still in her jammies, even barefoot. It made me smile that with an estate as large as Grant’s was, all three of us were clustered together in the same small space. “What were you and Dad doing all night out here in the pool house?”
Grant gave me an amused smile and waved his hand at me, giving me a turn to field the probing questions coming from our seven-year-old.
“Studying things.” Leaning down, I kissed the top of Charlie’s head, then Grant’s. He switched his arms around so he could have one around Charlie and one around me.
“Studying what?” she continued.
Grant’s smile went higher as he let me continue taking the lead.
“Studying all of this stuff.” I motioned at the handful of books Grant and Charlie had spread out on the table. A couple of them were books on how to talk about HD with kids. I felt that warm, happy feeling inside when I was reminded, yet again, what a fantastic human being Grant was.
“You were studying all night long?” Charlie blinked at me.
“Well, some of it, but we were doing other stuff too.” Half of my face pulled up as I realized how guilty I sounded from trying to sound innocent.
Charlie’s nose crinkled. “Doing what?”
Behind her, Grant’s face was breaking with silent laughter.
“Never mind,” I said, clapping as I headed into the kitchen. “Who wants French toast?”
“Me!” Charlie raised her spoon.
“Me, too!” Grant echoed. “Just make sure you down your green juice first.”
I groaned, glancing longingly at the coffee pot I’d been beelining toward. “I’ll make sure to grab you one too. Wouldn’t want you to be deprived of all of that yummy, nutritious goodness.”
“Already got one down first thing after I woke up.” Grant lifted the empty bottle on the table in front of him.
Making a face, I pulled open the fridge and dug out another bottle of toxic sludge. “When did you go and get all health conscious?” I grumbled.
Grant waited to answer until I’d opened the bottle and raised the bottle to my lips. Then he tucked his chin over Charlie’s head and smiled at me. “When I realized I had something to live for.”
This time, I didn’t sip and spew and sputter through the bottle of juice—I downed it in a few sips. I knew better than to believe drinking some healthy juice would cure my HD, but that wasn’t why it was so important to Grant. It was important to him for what came after HD, for our lives outside of HD. We couldn’t live every moment of every day orbiting around a disease. The juice was a symbol of what came after. A willingness to accept that my future wasn’t carved in stone. That there was still a reason to keep my body healthy because, like Grant, I had something to live for too.
I had a whole lot of something to live for.
“WHY DOES EVERYONE call Dad the Invincible Man?” Charlie shouted at me, trying to rise above the roar thundering through the stadium.
“What do you mean?” I leaned over, so I didn’t have to scream back.
“He gets tackled. He fumbles. He messes up.” She pointed at the field, where Grant’s cleats were the only part of him showing from the bottom of a player pile. A few of his teammates were tearing off the Hawks players, but I wasn’t worried. I knew he was okay despite the tackle pileup. It would take a lot more than that to keep Grant Turner down.
“I think it’s because nothing can stop him.” I wound my arm around her shoulder when I noticed her worry lines go deeper into her forehead. She hadn’t been around to see what Grant had endured in life like I had. She didn’t know just how tough her dad was—at least not in the same way I did. “No matter how many times he goes down, he bounces right back up. If he misses a ball one play, he catches the next hundred. It’s not so much that he’s invincible as in nothing can touch him, but invincible in that everything has touched him but hasn’t left its mark.”