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“What happens to what?” he asked.

“To you,” she started, but he immediately shut her down.

“No,” he said, his hand making a single, decisive swipe to the side.

“But—”

“No, Cassidy,” he said, his voice firm. “I don’t know where you’ve come from or what you know, I don’t even know if I have a brain tumor or something and I’m sitting here talking to myself. But I know I am not supposed to know about the future. What you want to tell me, what I think you want to tell me, nobody is supposed to know that.”

“But it might—”

“No,” he said fiercely, and she felt like she was eight again when he caught her drawing on the new wallpaper with crayons. She hadn’t liked the color of the wallpaper, so she’d tried to change it. She had never seen him so angry. At the time she hadn’t understood how much money he had spent to make her room pretty for her, and that he hadn’t really been angry, he’d been hurt that she hadn’t liked it.

“I just...” she started, but everything she wanted to say, every justification felt weak. She was aware that tears were running down her cheeks, big fat bulbous drops that fell to her lap. “It was so hard. For you. And for me. And after...” She looked away, wiping her cheeks with the heel of her hand. “I miss you every day, all the time. You were all I had for all my life and then you were gone.”

It was coming now, that waterfall of emotions bursting free.

“It’s been so hard. It’s a wound that won’t heal and I spend my life alone, reading my books and staying in. Maybe if I can tell you things, maybe it will all be different and I can still be at home, reading in the workshop while you work.”

The look he gave her was one of concern, but it was tinged with disappointment, she saw, and she heard how pathetic her own words sounded.

“Cassidy,” he said. “What you are talking about, that’s just life, no two ways about it, and you just need to get on with things.”

Her brow creased in frustration. He didn’t understand.

“You don’t have a right to be happy, Cassidy. Look at me, look at my life. I lost my wife and my daughter, I work every day to put food on the table and just about manage to keep my head above water. But it’s never easy. There’ve been times when I went hungry, when I couldn’t pay the bills. Happiness is not something you sit and wait for. You have to choose it and pursue it in spite of everything else. It’s not going to be given to you. And that stuff you are talking about, missing the house, missing me. That’s just growing older. You think I don’t miss your grandmother? I do. Every day, in every breath, every moment we would have shared together. But you have to let things go or it will eat you up. Let things pass.”

“I don’t want to,” she said through her tears.

“Nobody does. But you have to.”

It was his turn to reach across and hold her. His hand felt massive on top of hers, a huge, heavy shell.

“Even if you tell me whatever you want to tell me, even if it changes the future, you still have to live, Cassidy. You can’t hide from the knocks and scrapes of life forever. I know you like to hide in books, and maybethat’s my fault, because I like having you around all the time.” He sighed quietly. “Maybe I should start making you go out and make more friends.”

“No,” she said, because it was the last thing she wanted.

“You hide away from reality. But that’s not living. You know it.”

She nodded even though she hated everything he was saying.

“So what now?” he asked a few moments later.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. She felt deflated. What had she been looking for when she had come to meet him? Had it made things better, or just made them worse? “I suppose I need to go.”

Her grandpa considered that. “Is this... is this something you can do more than once?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know much. Sorry, it’s really hard to explain. But... But I’d like to come back. I’d like to see you again if you don’t mind.”

He smiled, and it was like the first light of dawn after a bad night. “Why would I mind? Come again, anytime you want.”

“It’s good to see you,” she said.

They stared at each other awkwardly. Then she asked, “Can I have a hug?”

He seemed surprised by the question.

“Please?” she asked.