Page 11 of Season of Gifts

She tried to match Henry’s tone, to be interested without being intrusive.He’d backed off on the concussion check, but he kept one hand on Jay’s shoulder, lightly massaging the slope toward his neck.

Jay hefted the spoon like he’d never in his life seen one.“I was wrapping up a client file.End of contract.”

He had exactly one client on Tuesdays, the woman he shopped for before their standing lunch date at Oscar’s.Nothing but paperwork after that.She’d been on her way to Oscar’s today when he texted.Ate without him rather than taking a sad solo lunch back to her desk.Usually he’d regale her with stories about the woman—Eickhoff, yes.She’d had hip surgery or something.“Not Mrs.Eickhoff?I mean, good for her that she’s doing so well she doesn’t need help anymore, but I’m sorry.I know how much you enjoy visiting her.”

The soup slopped over the side of the spoon and mostly back into the bowl, a few drops spattering the counter.“Yeah.Sorry.Clumsy.”

“Are you cold?”She pressed the back of her hand to his cheek, as if Henry hadn’t been touching him long enough to know whether he needed a hot shower before a hot meal.Jay had been out in far colder weather than they’d had today, but honestly, his lethargy was freaking her right the fuck out.Dad had been like this at the beginning, when the painkiller hit still took more than the edge off.At least Jay wasn’t slurring his words.“It’s nice that you got to see her this morning to say goodbye.Who won the card game?”

Folding his arms, he nudged the soup bowl away and laid his head down in the pillow he’d made.

Her heart pounded.If telepathy were a thing, Henry would be getting a screaming chorus offix thisin his head.She opened her mouth, and Henry held a finger to his, a silent library shush.His perplexed squint had disappeared; now his eyes seemed a bottomless well of mossy green.

Henry rested his hand at the back of Jay’s neck.“Were you the one to find her, Jay?”

The cold invaded her body.Christ, she was an idiot.

“Not me.”Jay’s muffled tenor emerged from his hiding place.“But they hadn’t…” His breath shook.“The paramedics or whoever, they hadn’t…” He scrubbed his face against his sleeves.“I lied.Later, I mean.I called the building super and said I needed the information for the company files.He said they told him probably a heart attack.That it was fast, and she didn’t, she didn’t…”

They hugged him in a mass of overlapping arms, gliding together like puzzle pieces around Jay, her head landing on Jay’s shoulder blades with Henry above her.“I’m so sorry.”

Empty words that couldn’t match the ache inside.Jay had been alone today, dealing with all of this on his own—wait.Jay hadchosento be alone instead of telling her or Henry what had been going on.“I know you were close.That must have been really rough.”

“She looked surprised,” Jay whispered.“Lying on the floor by her chair.”

A shudder rippled through Henry; she couldn’t move her head easily enough to figure out why.Jay shifted, pushing back, and they let him sit up.Red rimmed his eyes above shadowed hollows.“I know it’s not—she’s not my—but she was a nice lady.Mom-ish, you know, like moms are supposed to be.”

Yeah, and he’d lost two mom-ish women already this year, his sister to her hateful scheming and his mother to her I-never-loved-you bullshit and growing dementia.Couldn’t life cut them a break for once?

Henry gently slid the soup closer to Jay.“It’s difficult to see someone you love like that.Hard to know what you’re seeing at first, harder still to accept it.Sometimes we run from that pain before we can face it.”

Like the first time they’d let her into Dad’s hospital room, and her feet sank foundations into the floor a foot inside the doorway.Her brain looped athat’s not Dadsoundtrack, her chest burned like running wind sprints in gym class, and her legs flat-out refused to move closer to the beeping bed with its nest of tubes and wires.

Henry sounded like someone who knew.Not empathized with Jay because he loved Jay and wanted him not to hurt, though yeah, that too, butknewknew.Like someone who’d been there.

Jay stirred his spoon through the soup, holding the silverware with a little more of the competence of someone who’d been feeding himself for decades.“I didn’t wait with them.Her neighbor, the super.I couldn’t stay where she was just, just on the floor and not moving and not breathing and not, nother.I ran away.”

Humming, Henry firmed Jay’s grip on the spoon and guided a bite into his mouth.“And afterward?Did you ride to clear your head?”

“Sort of.”Two more spoonfuls, Jay-propelled, got to the right place.If he’d been out riding and hadn’t eaten most of the day, his body would be craving nutrients like crazy.“I rode back to the office and called her son.So he’d know.So it wouldn’t be a complete stranger who told him his mom was dead.”

A tear slid from Henry’s eye, rolling down the side of his nose.“That was kind of you, Jay.”He pressed his face to the top of Jay’s head, leaving a kiss and the errant tear behind.“I am exceptionally proud of you.It sounds as though you did exactly what was needed.”

“Maybe if I’d been there earlier—”

“No, my sweet boy.”On the far side of Jay, Henry rested his elbows on the counter, his hands clasped, his gaze steady out the kitchen window into the dark December evening.“What-if is a dangerous road to travel.If you allow it to start unraveling in front of you, you’ll teach your mind to take that road again and again.Grief and anger will become tormentors, constant companions rather than transient emotions.You experienced a tragedy today, but it was not of your making.The guilt and recriminations are not yours to bear.”

“Have you ever…” Jay curled one hand around the warm bowl, rubbing the edge with his thumb.“Have you ever seen someone like that?”

She avoided swiveling her head and staring, but Jay had asked the question her lips desperately wanted to pose.Henry’s father was dead, had been for years, though he’d never shared the details.Maybe his firsthand knowledge came from that.

“Once.”

The air in the kitchen crystallized; even her tiniest breath might crack it.

“Many years ago, during a medical emergency.”

Jay’s knee bounced.Such a small motion, rise and fall.Did it feel like pedaling in his head?

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