A year ago, Wyatt was on his way to living the dream—a big city, the school he had always wanted, and a promising career. Then came the call. His grandfather’s health was declining rapidly, and Wyatt was all he had left. Without a second thought, Wyatt packed up, left school, and moved in to take care of him.
His grandfather never stopped feeling guilty. The first thing he said when Wyatt arrived?
“So, dropped out of college to become a full-time nurse? Quite the career change. I told you to stay in school, Wyatt…”
Then, one day, the doorbell rang.
His grandfather looked just as confused as Wyatt. They weren’t expecting anyone.
Wyatt sighed, got up, and opened the door.
For a few seconds that felt like an eternity, he couldn’t find a single word. A ghost from the past was standing right in front of him.
He had been on the porch, looking at the peeling paint on the railing. How many times had his grandfather mentioned fixing it? Too many to count. He always promised to help when he had the time.
Time. The one thing neither of them really had anymore. Wyatt opened the door, bracing himself for what was inside. The house smelled the same—a mix of old books, coffee, and the pine-scented cleaner his grandfather insisted on using because Grandma liked it.
Some things never changed, even when everything else did.
“Is that you, kid?” His voice came from the bedroom, weaker than Wyatt remembered, but still with that unmistakable warmth. “Yeah, Grandpa. It’s me.” Wyatt followed the voice, gym bag heavy on his shoulder.
He was sitting on the bed, thinner than the last time Wyatt had seen him on a video call. The hospice nurse had warned him, but seeing it in person was different.
His grandfather’s cheeks were hollow, his clothes hung loose, but his eyes were just as sharp as ever.
“Well, don’t just stand there staring. Come give your old man a hug.”
Wyatt crossed the room and hugged him gently. He felt fragile, like bird bones under his hands.
“You don’t have to treat me like glass, Wyatt,” he joked, patting his back. “I’m not dead yet.” “Grandpa,” Wyatt scolded gently, pulling back to look at him. “Oh, relax,” he waved him off. “If I can’t joke about this, what’s the point?”
Wyatt busied himself adjusting pillows and checking the medication on the nightstand, but his heart ached. His grandfather had been everything to him since his parents died when he was 10.
When the hospice nurse called and told him how fast things were going downhill, he rushed home immediately.
“So, dropping out of school to be a nurse full-time?” his grandfather remarked. “Told you to stick it out, Wyatt…”
Wyatt grimaced. “I didn’t drop out. I’m on leave. I’ll go back as soon as you’re—”
The doorbell rang, cutting him off.
His grandfather looked as puzzled as Wyatt. “Maybe it’s those church folks again,” he said. “Tell them I already found salvation in whiskey and westerns.” Wyatt rolled his eyes and headed for the door.
When he opened it, his heart nearly stopped.
“Jade? What are you doing here?” he asked, stunned. She stood on their porch, holding a foil-covered casserole dish, her smile hesitant. “My mom saw you arrive,” she said, lifting the dish slightly. “We thought you both might need something edible.” “So, it’s not your cooking?” The joke slipped out before Wyatt could stop it, a reflex from years of easy teasing.
Her eyebrows shot up. “Bold of someone who’s been missing for four years.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, heat rising in his face. “It’s just… last I heard, you got married. In San Francisco.” “I was…” she glanced over her shoulder. “But now’s not the time to talk about that, Wyatt.”
Just then, a small figure peeked out from behind her legs. A little girl, maybe six, with Jade’s eyes. She clutched a worn bunny plush to her chest and looked at Wyatt with the kind of careful suspicion only kids can manage.
“Lila, say hi to Wyatt. He’s Grandpa Joe’s grandson,” Jade said. Wyatt crouched to her level and smiled. “Nice to meet you, Lila. Does your bunny have a name?” She studied him for a long moment before whispering, “Muffin.” “So, can we come in or…?” Jade tilted her head.
“Of course.” Wyatt stepped aside to let her in.
“Is that Jade I hear?” Grandpa called from his room. “The one and only!” Jade answered, shooting Wyatt a look he couldn’t quite read before leading her daughter inside. He stood frozen in the hallway, trying to process what was happening. Jade was back. With a daughter.
What else had he missed while he was away?
A week into his new routine as a caregiver, Wyatt and his grandfather were sitting in the living room. Grandpa had been watching him all morning with a strange expression, somewhere between worry and frustration.
“You can’t put your life on hold for me,” he finally said, breaking the silence. “What about your degree? You were just months from finishing.” Wyatt shrugged, trying to sound light. “I told you, it’s just a leave, Grandpa. The school understands.” “Then what?” His grandfather looked at him with fierce eyes. “How will you pay for the rest of school once I’m gone? We’ve kept your loans low by splitting the costs between us, but now…”
“I’m applying for jobs,” Wyatt said, which was true—just not the whole truth. “I’ll figure it out, Grandpa. I promise.”
“I’m afraid it won’t be that easy,” he said.
“I’m leaving you the house and whatever savings I have, but it won’t last. You’ll have to pay property taxes…”
He was cut off by a coughing fit. Wyatt rushed to him, waited for it to pass, and then handed him some water.
“Don’t worry about me, Grandpa,” he said softly. “I’m working on it.”
Wyatt had been applying for everything he could find—sales, food service, office work—anything that could bring in income while he cared for his grandfather. But Grandpa was right. It wouldn’t be enough. Still, Wyatt couldn’t let himself stress about work or school while his grandfather was slipping away.
The next day, Wyatt moved his laptop to the bedroom to work while Grandpa rested, hoping it would help ease his mind.
“Any luck?” Grandpa asked, watching him scroll. “A few possibilities,” Wyatt replied vaguely.
The worry in his eyes was becoming unbearable. A few days later, Wyatt made a decision that felt both terrible and necessary.
“I got a job,” he said over breakfast, forcing excitement into his voice. “Part-time receptionist at a downtown office.” It was a lie, but the relief he saw on his grandfather’s face made the guilt in Wyatt’s gut worth it.
That night, Jade brought dinner. After they ate, they sat on the back porch while Lila chased fireflies in the yard, her laughter floating through the warm evening air.
“I lied to Grandpa today,” Wyatt admitted, staring at his hands. “Told him I got a job. I’ve sent out like a dozen applications. Nothing yet. Probably nothing tomorrow either. And meanwhile, he keeps worrying about me… so I lied.”
Jade didn’t answer right away. She just watched her daughter dart through the grass.
“Lila’s in kindergarten until two, and I’m not working right now,” she finally said. “I can stay with him while you pretend to go to work. He just needs company, right?”
Wyatt looked at her, stunned by the offer. “You’d do that?” “Sure,” she gave him a small smile. “If it helps him feel better about things.” They sat quietly, watching the fireflies blink in and out of the growing dark.
“Do you ever feel like life was supposed to be more than this?” Jade asked suddenly, looking at the sky. “Like we missed a turn somewhere.”
“Yeah.” The word came out soft, almost carried away by the night breeze. “I had this whole plan—college, career, maybe a little downtown apartment. Now here I am with Pops, and none of it’s turned out like I thought.”
“I get it,” she said. “My ex took everything in the divorce. I had to move back home because I had nowhere else to go. This wasn’t what I meant when I said ‘forever.’”
Wyatt started to reach for her hand but thought better of it, letting his fingers fall back onto the wooden step.
“I didn’t have a ‘forever’ to lose like you did… but I know what it’s like to have the rug pulled out from under you. Suddenly you’re starting over, and nothing feels steady.”
“Funny how we ended up right back where we started.” Jade smiled, and in the porch light glow, her eyes held something warm and familiar.
They looked at each other, and for a moment, all the years between them fell away. Then Lila ran over, grabbed Wyatt’s hand, and begged him to help her catch a particularly tricky firefly.
The days settled into a rhythm. In the mornings, Jade came over to stay with Grandpa. Wyatt took his laptop to the library to spend the morning searching for jobs and sending out applications. Then came the day everything changed.
He had just come back from another failed job hunt when he heard a sound from Grandpa’s room.
Wyatt rushed in and found him on the floor, trying to get up. His heart pounded as he helped him back into bed. “I’m fine,” Grandpa insisted, but his face was pale, and his breathing was heavy. “Just got a little dizzy.” “I’m calling the doctor,” Wyatt said, hands shaking as he reached for his phone.
“No need to make a big fuss,” he grumbled, but didn’t stop him.
Later, after Grandpa had dozed off, Jade found Wyatt in the kitchen, still trembling as he tried to make coffee.
She reached out and grabbed his arm firmly. “Hey. He’s okay right now. You’re okay. Breathe, Wyatt.” He sank into a chair, head in his hands. The reality he’d been trying to outrun was catching up fast.
Later that afternoon, Lila came by proudly showing a crayon drawing. “I made this for Grandpa Joe so he feels better.”
It was a picture of stick figures holding hands in a field of flowers: him, Jade, and Lila. Something knotted in Wyatt’s throat—a feeling he couldn’t name.
Three days later, he got a call for a job interview—an admin position at a rehab center working with occupational therapy students.
But the interview was the same day as Grandpa’s follow-up appointment.
“I can stay with him,” Jade offered immediately. “You should go to that interview.” “You would? Even with everything else you’ve got going on?” She smiled. “We help each other.”
When Wyatt returned from the interview, cautiously hopeful, Jade was waiting in the kitchen. The look in her eyes made his stomach tighten.
“The trip tired him out,” she said softly. “He’s been sleeping ever since we got back.”
Wyatt found Grandpa in bed, eyes closed, breathing heavily. He watched him sleep, noticing how the illness had stripped everything away except his core essence.
The next morning, Grandpa asked Wyatt to help him to his chair by the window. “I want to see the birds,” he explained.
Wyatt got him settled with a blanket, made sure his meds and water were nearby. Grandpa looked content watching the garden he had tended for decades.
Later that afternoon, Wyatt noticed he hadn’t moved in a while. Something about the silence made his heart beat faster as he rushed to the living room.
He was sitting exactly where Wyatt had left him, hands folded, eyes closed. But Wyatt knew the moment he touched his hand.
The stillness. The cold.
“No,” he whispered, collapsing to his knees. “Please, no.”
He didn’t know how long he stayed there, forehead against Grandpa’s knee, tears soaking the blanket. Minutes or hours—it made no difference.
He didn’t hear the front door open or notice Jade until she was beside him.
“Wyatt,” she said softly, and then, seeing his face, she understood. “Oh, Wyatt.”
She knelt beside him and held him as sobs tore through his chest. She didn’t speak, didn’t pull away, just held him as he came undone.
After the funeral, Wyatt found the letter. It was on Grandpa’s nightstand, a plain white envelope with his name in shaky handwriting.
He took it to the chair—his chair now, he supposed—and opened it with trembling fingers.
You made me proud every day. I hope you know that. Now I need you to start living. Chase something for yourself, get that degree, and change the world. And when it gets hard, remember—I’ll always be with you.
Go live, Wyatt. For both of us.
He read it twice, three times, until the words blurred through his tears. Then he folded it gently and placed it in his wallet.
That afternoon, he called the rehab center and accepted their job offer. It wasn’t ideal, but it was in his field and enough to keep him going and help him return to school.
A week later, Jade invited him for dinner at her parents’ house.
The warmth of their home wrapped around him the moment he stepped inside—the smell of home cooking, Lila’s excited chatter as she showed him her latest drawings. It reminded him of family dinners with his parents before they died, and then, the quiet meals with Grandpa.
After dinner, while her parents played with Lila in the living room, Wyatt and Jade stayed at the sink washing dishes.
“You know,” he said, handing her a plate to dry, “this feels like the first time in a long time I’m not waiting for something to go wrong.” She looked at him, dish towel paused mid-motion. “Maybe it’s time to stop waiting, Wyatt. Maybe it’s time to start making things go right.”
They turned to each other, hands still wet, standing so close in the small kitchen.
“There’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while,” he admitted quietly. A smile bloomed across her face, reaching her eyes. “Then don’t wait.”
When their lips met, it was gentle at first, tentative, then certain. Like coming home after a long journey to find everything just as you left it—only somehow better.