Later in the drive, she told me something I’d never once heard before — that Grandpa had driven her through four different states over the years, searching bus stations, stopping at police departments, shelters, clubs, music halls, anywhere a lead might turn up. He kept every single lead written down in a black notebook. Whenever one fell through, he’d let her sit quietly in the car for as long as she needed before he started the engine again and drove them to the next place on the list.
He never once complained about any of it. He drove until his hands cramped on the wheel, slept in cheap motels along the way, and went back to work exhausted every Monday morning like nothing unusual had happened over the weekend. Once, outside a closed music hall in Ohio, Grandma had told him he should stop wasting his time on a search that clearly wasn’t going anywhere.
He’d just taken her hand. “Loving you means helping you look,” he’d told her. “Even if we never actually find him.”
“He never told us any of that,” I said quietly, staring at the road.
“He knew how much it hurt me,” Grandma said. “Why did we stop looking, you ask? We simply ran out of places left to try.”
The Common Room
The assisted-living community turned out to be smaller than I’d expected. Michael met us at the entrance. “He’s near the window, in the common room,” he said.
Through the doorway, Grandma could only see the back of Andrew’s chair, and one silver-haired hand resting on an old trumpet in his lap. She gripped my arm so tightly her wedding ring pressed hard into my skin. For one second, I thought she might actually turn around and walk back out.
“What if he hates me?” she asked quietly.
Michael answered her honestly, without softening it. “He might.”
Grandma nodded slowly. “Then he has earned that right.”
Andrew lifted the trumpet slightly, testing its weight in his hands, and Grandma took one careful step forward into the room. He had her same nose, the same deep line settled between his eyebrows. When he saw her, his hands tightened around the instrument in his lap.
He looked at her for a long, suspended second. “You’re Margaret,” he said, his voice rough but perfectly clear.
Grandma touched his shoulder gently. “Andy-Bird,” she said, an old nickname clearly resurfacing from somewhere decades deep.
Andrew closed his eyes, and then he began to cry.
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