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Palm Springs

January 4, 2023

3:30 P.M.

The girls, Octavia, and I sat huddled under one blanket on the couch, sharing the silence. No television, no conversation. We were staring at the rain lashing the windows, watching the palm fronds pushed to the side. No horror movie could have made the scene feel more ominous. The room was heavy with the intensity of our shared sense of doom. It was one of the first times I’d let them see how worried I truly was. There was no way to pretend anymore, the situation was too dire.

A watched pot never boils, so of course my phone didn’t light up until I’d left it on the coffee table, one of the first times in days that it hadn’t been in my hand. I’d taken it everywhere with me, even into the bathroom.

Dort grabbed it, looked at the screen, bit her lip, and handed it to me. “It’s Brady.” She swiped to answer it and handed the phone to me. Whenever he called, I wondered what would be worse: hearing that Grant’s body had been found, or for him to remain missing for days, months, years… forever?

Brady was a man of few words. “You won’t believe this.”

I felt all the blood drain from my face. “What? Believe what?”

“We were wrapping up when Hobie insisted on one last run, a real Hail Mary. I said no, it went against my better judgment. Winds were already getting bad. Fine, I told him. A quick up and down. Then we saw blue. The blue jacket. We found him. We put him in a screamer suit and hoisted him by helicopter off the mountain.”

I took a deep breath to stop my lower lip from quivering. “Brady? Is he alive? You didn’t say if he’s alive.”

The girls were glued to me, searching my expression for news. I couldn’t exhale. Time stopped.

“Oh, sorry.” I thought he meant he was sorry Grant wasn’t alive. Then he said, “Yeah, he is. If he wasn’t, I would have shown up at your door to tell you myself.”

I let the phone drop out of my hands and into my lap. The girls hadn’t looked at me with this much intensity since they were infants gazing at my face as I fed them. They must have thought it was bad. I was too shocked to even speak.

Octavia came to where I sat and put her arm around my shoulder, expecting the worst.

Finally, I came to, as if from a brief fainting spell. “Hobie did it. He found him. Grant is alive!”

Gene, who’d been like a watchdog since Grant had gone missing, heard us shrieking from his condo. He ran over to see if we were okay, followed by Jeanie, and his concern melted the minute he saw Dort and March smile. By then, the girls, Octavia, and I were jumping around, screaming. Never in my life had I felt such pure, ecstatic joy.

Jeanie walked into the room and clapped her hands. “Thank you for coming to my birthday party!”

After that, Le Desert, if seen from above, must have looked like a scene from a musical Basil would write the lyrics for, with every door swinging open at almost the exact same moment after Dort sent a text to the rescue group from my phone: They found him! The bird is in the nest!

Everyone rushed into the courtyard to celebrate in the wind and rain. We were soaked, and we didn’t care.

Melody said she was on her way to pick us up. We had a few moments to hug Thomas and Raul, Coco, the couple from Minnesota, and two brothers from Winnipeg who’d just checked in to one of the units that day and had no idea what was going on, but joined in our celebration anyway.

It felt as if every bottled-up emotion, every worry, every bit of fear I’d felt all these years about losing Grant, had been relieved. I had to really lose him to know what I had. I threw my head back and laughed and wept at the same time. I hugged the girls over and over. Never in my life had I been so happy, or so sure that I wanted to be with Grant forever. I ran into the house and opened Grant’s dresser drawer to find the engagement ring that I knew he kept hidden. It was my turn to see if Grant would say yes.

But it was missing. I tried to remember when I’d last seen it, my heart sinking at the possible implications, the vitriol of our fight on New Year’s Eve hitting me all over again. Why would it now be gone?

The smell was the first thing that hit me. It was Grant’s smell times a thousand; it was every dirty workout shirt, every smelly bathroom that I’d silently cursed over the last thirty years. I didn’t care. It was Grant. The girls and I approached the gurney in the hallway where he was waiting to be scanned. His hair was shockingly dark against the white sheet. His face was drawn and sallow from dehydration, his lips were cracked. He had a black eye.

I hoisted myself onto the gurney and lay by his side. He was almost too wiped out to smile—almost. I kissed him on the cheek and began to cry. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I never thought I’d be able to say I’m sorry. I’ll go back to Madison with you. I’ll go to Omaha. I’ll go anywhere as long as you’re there. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I love you. I thought I might never be able to say those words to you.”

“My pack.” I didn’t know if he couldn’t talk because he was too thirsty or too tired.

“Your what?”

“My pack. I need my pack.”

I figured he was delirious. “It’s at home. Honestly, I thought about burning it.”

He pointed at his legs. His hand was covered in scabs. “My pockets.”

“What about them?”

His expensive pants had held up surprisingly well. I reached in and felt a bunch of rocks. I pulled them out—one, two, four, six. “These are beautiful.”

Tears ran down the sides of his dirty cheeks. “For you. And you and you.” He looked at March and Dort on either side of him. Never before had I felt more that we were a real family.

“Grant”—my eyes filled with tears—“will you marry me?”

He didn’t answer. He was very still.

“Dad, oh my God,” March said. “We can have a double wedding. Wouldn’t that be nuts?”

We were all intently staring at Grant, waiting for his answer. He opened his mouth to speak, and then his skin paled and his eyes began to roll back in his head.

“Nurse?” March shrieked. “Nurse! My dad doesn’t look right!”

“Come back to us, Grant,” I said. I rubbed his hands, his cheeks. I kissed his forehead. The silver stones clattered on the hard tile floor. “Come back, please.” I kissed him on the lips and tried to blow some life into him. “You can’t do this, Grant. Not after what you’ve been through. Come on, we’re all here, we all love you so much. We need you to come back. We need you.”

“Dad!”

Before I knew it, a team of nurses and doctors told us to step aside. “Code blue!” one of the nurses said.

The last thing I saw were the bottoms of his bare feet, red, swollen, and covered in blisters. They pushed him into the emergency room, the doors swinging shut.

This time he wasn’t missing or lost: he was gone.