And he was eighty years of age.
“Collapsed?” Sean tightened his grip on the phone, remembering the number of times he’d said that the only way his grandfather would leave his beloved Snow Crystal would be if he was carried out in an ambulance. “What does that mean? Cardiac or neurological? Stroke or heart attack? Tell me in medical terms.”
“I don’t know the medical terms! It’s his heart, they think. He had that pain last winter, remember? They’re doing tests. He’s alive, that’s what counts. They didn’t say much and I was focusing on Mom and Grams. You’re the doctor, which is why I’m telling you to get your butt back here now so you can translate doctor-speak. I can handle the business but this is your domain. You need to come home, Sean.”
Home?
Home was his apartment in Boston with his state-of-the-art sound system, not a lake set against a backdrop of mountains and surrounded by a forest that had their family history carved into the trees.
Sean leaned his head back and stared up at the perfect blue sky that formed a contrast to the dark emotions swirling inside him.
He imagined his grandfather, pale and helpless, trapped in the sterile environment of a hospital, away from his precious Snow Crystal.
“Sean?” Jackson’s voice came through the speaker. “Are you still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here.” His other hand gripped the wheel of his car, knuckles white because there were things his brother didn’t know. Things they hadn’t talked about.
“Mom and Grams need you. You’re the doctor in the family. I can handle the business but I can’t handle this.”
“Was someone with him when it happened? Grams?”
“Not Grams. He was with Élise. She acted very quickly. If she hadn’t, we’d be having a different conversation.”
Élise, the head chef at Snow Crystal.
Sean stared straight ahead, thinking about that single night the summer before. For a brief moment he was back there, breathing in her scent, remembering the wildness of it.
That was something else his brother knew nothing about.
He swore under his breath and then realized Jackson was still talking.
“How soon can you get here?”
Sean thought about his grandfather, lying pale and still in a hospital bed while their mother, the family glue, struggled to hold everything together and Jackson did more than could be expected of one man.
He was sure his grandfather wouldn’t want him there, but the rest of his family needed him.
And as for Élise—it had been a single night, that was all. They weren’t in a relationship and never would be so there was no reason to mention it to his brother.
He made some rapid mental calculations.
The journey would take him three and a half hours, and that was without counting the time it would take to drive home and pack a bag.
“I’ll be with you as soon as I can. I’ll call his doctors now and find out what’s going on.”
“Come straight to the hospital. And drive carefully. One member of the family in the hospital is enough.” There was a brief pause. “It will be good to have you back at Snow Crystal, Sean.”
The reply wedged itself in his throat.
He’d grown up by the lake, surrounded by lush forests and mountains. He couldn’t identify the exact time he’d known it wasn’t where he wanted to be. When the place had started to irritate and chafe everything from his skin to his ambitions. It wasn’t something he’d been able to voice because to admit that there might be a place more perfect than Snow Crystal would have been heresy in the O’Neil family. Except to his father. Michael O’Neil had shared his conflicted emotions about the place. His father was the one person who would have understood.
Guilt dug deep, twisting in his ribs like a knife, because apart from the row with his grandfather and his wild fling with Élise, there was something else he’d never told his brother.
He’d never told him how much he hated coming home.
* * *
“I ’AVE KILLED WALTER! This is all my fault! I was so desperate to have the old boathouse finished in time for the party, I let an eighty-year-old man work on the deck.” Élise paced across the deck of her pretty lakeside lodge, out of her mind with worry. “Merde, I am a bad person. Jackson should fire me.”