Hours later, I was reminded why we were back in Connecticut. Why we'd been subjected to the ordeal of an outburst from Gigi. It came in the form of my phone ringing at 6:45 in the morning, and to say it was a rude awakening would be an understatement.

"Hello?" I answered groggily.

"Yes, hello? Miss Cobblestone?" A timid voice sounded from the other end.

"This is," I said as I sat up, rubbing my eyes and glancing around. Jake seemed to have taken up a kind of watch in the night, because as I looked to the window of the hotel room, I saw him. His head was lolled to the side, his body half leaning against a chair that looked just like the one they provided for the desk on the side of the room. I felt indescribably touched as I realized that he must've moved the chair close to my bed once I'd finally fallen asleep.

He couldn't have gotten more than an hours sleep, and so I got up, walked to the door, and stepped out into the hotels hallway to continue the conversation.

"Um, I'm sorry, who is this?" I asked.

"Oh, hi, miss Cobblestone, this is Trinity? From Briton Medical? We spoke a couple of days ago?" The voice answered.

"Oh! Yes! God, yes, I'm sorry, hi! How is she? My grandmother, I mean, how- how is she?"

"I'm afraid it's bad news. Mrs. Cobblestone passed in the night. The doctors are trying to confirm, but it looks like she died peacefully in her sleep."

It felt like all the air had been sucked from my lungs, and every breath I tried to take was a waste. I fell back against the wall, beyond shock. Beyond distraught. I thought of Jake, sleeping in the room feet away from me, not knowing. I thought of Grams, lying who knew where now. In her bed? In a morgue? Either way, she would be alone. Cold, and alone. And I couldn't allow that.

The tears streamed freely, and I somehow stood myself upright. "What should I... what should I do?"

"Well, first, come down to our facility. We do have papers to discuss. Oh, and we do need someone from the family to have a funeral home collect the body. If you wanted a minute alone with her, to say goodbye, I believe we could arrange that as well."

I wiped my face and started walking toward the door to our room. "My brother and I will be there. Soon. We're already in the state, so it shouldn't take more than 15 minutes."

"Alright, we'll see you both soon. And we're very sorry for your loss." Click.

I knew I needed a minute. I knew that the second I walked into our room, Jake would wake, and the moment he did, he would ask questions. Questions I wasn't exactly ready to answer. Questions that shouldn't be. Because nothing should have been hidden from us. The answers could've been right there, all along. If Gigi would've only told us. Or let us see Grams, let her tell us. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. Why all the unnecessary secrets? Why all the ridiculous hiding? Was it not my past, too? Jake's? Didn't they give a fuck about the children they'd hidden this stuff from? How unprepared they'd left us? In what world could it be right to hide a child's entire life from them? What more would we possibly never know? What other secrets had just died? Never to see an inquisitive ear again?

And then, the grief hit me. Hard. Grams, and Gramps, for that matter, had been a pivotal figure in the first few years that I could remember after mom and dad. Gigi had left us at her house for hours sometimes. Jake would always beg her to make the special cookies that only she made, and I would be her 'secret helper', gathering the ingredients without Jake knowing. She'd read to us, indulge Gramps in his tales by the fire. But she had always wanted more. More time with us, more chances to do things. It had just never happened. And then we'd moved away. Never to see her again except on holidays. That was, of course, before Jake and I had moved ourselves, out of here and to Wisconsin. I had always thought that we'd have more time. That we would eventually, once the dust had settled, visit. And it had never happened. And now, it was too late. We could never visit her again. Not in life, at least.

As the tears threatened to become vocal, I opened the door to our room and walked in quickly, desperate to give Jake the tragic news. He was up, of course, and he knew. It took one look at my face, and his fell.

"Grams?" He whispered solemnly.

I sniffled, choking back a sob, and nodded.

In a heartbeat, he ran to my side and grabbed me into a hug so tight I felt held together for just a moment. He cried quietly into my shoulder, and we didn't say a word. I clutched his back, holding him as he softly sobbed. After a few minutes, the room was silent again as Jake pulled away and stared at me, his face full of grief.

"What happens now?" He asked in a murmur.

"We have to go. We have to see her, and talk to the place that was caring for her. And then, I think we need to plan the funeral, unless Grams did some kind of pre-need thing." I admitted with another sniffle.

"Then let's go. It sounds like we have work to do." Jake said, walking to the door and opening it in a rush.

"Jake, don't you think we should take a minute to process-"

"We don't have a minute, Reagan. We can process once we've done what needs to be done." He took a breath, sighed, and then spoke again in a calmer tone. "Yes, I do think we should. But Grams is waiting for us, and you know how she hates it when we're late."

Tears slid down both our faces at his words, and I choked out a half-sob, half-laugh. I walked to the door after him, and then we urgently made our way out of the hotel and to the rental car. I typed in the address to get directions, buckled my seat belt, and felt all of the weight and anxiety crash down on me at once. Jake was right. There was so much to do. But without Grams, the threat that lied before us had no guide, and it felt like no hope. Worse still, losing Grams was like losing all of our childhood. Every happy memory, every good time, had been with her, and our grandfather. And now, the only living Cobblestones left were us. Gigi could claim relation to our mother by blood, but she wasn't a Cobblestone, I realized as we drove to the nursing home. Not in the name, and not in familial honor.

"Reagan," Jake spoke quietly after we'd been driving a while. "Do you think Grams maybe left us something? Like mom and dad? A tape, a last message? Saying... saying... goodbye?"

I stopped the car, unbuckled, and sighed. "I don't know, Jake. I hope so. Would be nice to hear her voice again. But, I wouldn't count on it, ok?"

Jake nodded, and then we both got out of the car and walked into Briton Medical. It had the feel of a rec center, and yet somehow also reminded me of every generic hospital around. Though they had tried, to their credit, to make the place both look and feel like home, I couldn't see it. Not with these eyes. All I could see was my grandmother's death place.

When we approached the desk, a woman was working at the computer and seemed startled by our appearance. When I told her who we were, she understood at once.

"Oh, of course, right this way. I'm so sorry, for the way I behaved and for your loss." She ushered us away from the front desk.

We stopped outside a room, labeled room 452, and I gasped. It had been at that time last night that I had had that horrible experience that had made Jake so worried. An experience that, with the sight of those numbers, was slowly coming back to me, though still shrouded in fog.

"She's in here. I'll tell the doctor you've arrived and just give you two a moment alone." The nurse said with a sympathetic smile as she left us.

I grabbed Jake's wrist, weary of holding his hand for the time being, and shot him an anxious glance. He nodded, squeezing my wrist, and so I took a deep breath and opened the door.

When we walked into her room, I couldn't control myself as I darted to the side of her bed. She could've been asleep, her face was so calm, but for her eyes. Her once light-filled blue eyes were staring open, seeing nothing. Her hair, which had once always been up in a bun, was feathered softly all around her, and she wore a plain white nightgown that I highly doubted she had picked. Nothing shocked me more, though, than when I grabbed her hand.

"She's still warm," I whimpered, trying so hard to not lose it in front of a medical center full of people. "I thought she'd be... cold or something. Aren't they always cold? But she's... still warm..."

I couldn't control it anymore. I burst out into choked sobs and gasps, barely feeling the pair of arms that had secured themselves tightly around me. For the brief seconds when I could quiet myself, I heard my brothers voice, full of grief of his own, talking to me. Just telling me it'll be alright. Trying to comfort me. And then, as I sat down on the bed beside Grams, he looked around the room, marched to the door and closed it, and then walked back to me with a blaze in his eyes.

"Is she here? Reagan, use your gift, look around and see if Grams is here." He said, allowing no questions or argument.

I wiped my face, stood up, and looked around the room. Grams appeared to have tried to decorate it. She'd put pictures up on the dresser, hung some paintings, and had some flowers. As I walked around, having no idea what I was doing, I tried to sense rather than see. Though I'd never done it before, maybe Jake was right. Maybe we did have some way of sharing our gifts, and maybe it wasn't just in touching palms, but how our gifts worked. Now that I had somehow gotten an inside look into how his did, maybe it could help me better understand mine.

As I approached the other side of Grams bed, I noticed something off about the picture on her dresser.

"Hang on," I said, walking up to the dresser and picking it up. "This picture. It has a date on it."

"So?" Jake's voice questioned from behind me.

"Well, you know Grams, she hated that kind of thing. She never wrote over pictures, said it ruined the meaning."

Jake came up beside me then, and looked at the photo himself. "1987? What does that have to do with anything?"

"Maybe its the year the photo was taken?" I speculated. And then, it hit me. Smacked me in the head, actually.  A piece of the paneling on the ceiling above had fallen down, and Jake ducked as we both jumped away.

Looking up into the darkness above, I felt goosebumps rise all over my body. It was way too similar, and I was so scared that I almost wanted to run out of the room screaming. Jake, however, leapt to the rubble and picked up something from its debris.

"Look! It's a photo album! I wonder how Grams got it up there?" He wondered, glancing up at the gaping hole.

As I checked it out, I gasped again. These photos all had names, dates, and descriptions under each one in Grams neat handwriting, and one, labeled 'Timothy and Tiffany, Cobblestone house, 1987'.

I ran over to the dresser, picked up the photo I'd dropped, and ran back to Jake. As Jake was about to close the album, I yelped, "Wait! Look! This! It's the same photo! I- th- this is our house! I mean, our childhood house!"

We compared the photos, and sure enough, they were the same. Though why Grams had written the year on one, I didn't know.

"She gave us an answer after all," Jake breathed.

It took me a few seconds to process what he'd said, but the second I did I glared at him sternly. "Jake, no."

"Come on, Reag! What more clues do we need that we're supposed to go back to that house!" He argued desperately.

"I told you, no. It isn't safe." I walked back to Grams side and sat down, not wanting to argue with him.

"Reagan," He pled. "Please. This could be our only chance to get answers! I'm not saying we have to go right away! Obviously Grams comes first. But, after we care for her, we need to. I'm begging you. This means something."

I glared at him, my mouth pushed out stubbornly. "No. End of discussion."

"Why?"

"Because!"

"Because?"

I inhaled, composed myself, and then replied. "Say we go. And, say there are answers. Great. What if they aren't what we want to here? Or, worse yet, knowing mom and dad, what if something is waiting for us? Something we aren't prepared for? Do you seriously think I want to take that risk? Do you really want to take that risk?"

Jake nodded, but the determined light in his eyes didn't change. I knew him, and I knew that look. It meant that he intended to go anyway. My decision be damned. He didn't care about the risk, he cared about answers. And if I didn't go with him, he'd go it alone, putting himself in even more danger. I groaned, putting my hands to my head, and tried one last time to stop him and change his mind.

"Jake, this is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about! You're putting yourself at a huge risk, for something we don't even know if we're gonna find! Can't you please, please, understand the position you're putting me in? How can I protect you when you just want to endanger yourself recklessly?"

He didn't respond, and I dropped my hands. His face had grown desperate and hurt, and he held my gaze steadily.

"Sorry." I said quietly after a moment.

His voice and lips trembled as he replied. "You can't stop me, Reagan."

"Jake," my voice broke.

"I need to do this. And I don't want to do it alone. But you can't stop me, Reagan."