Between Yesterday and Goodbye

The last time Sam saw Grandpa Ray, the old man lay still beneath a quilt stitched with red cardinals and faded army patches. His hands were paper-thin and mottled. His voice had gone two days before, but his eyes still flickered when Sam, now twenty-five, leaned close and whispered, “I’ll fix it, okay?”

There was a quiet desperation in that glance — like Grandpa was passing on more than just a goodbye. Like he was leaving Sam a burden wrapped in hope. Sam swallowed hard, knowing this wasn’t just about machines or memories. It was something heavier, something that would change everything.

Nobody really took seriously a twenty-five-year-old making a promise like that at a funeral.

But Sam wasn’t lying.

The shed behind their family home was Grandpa Ray’s domain. A place smelling of sawdust, motor oil, and wintergreen gum. Full of broken radios, mismatched tools, jars of screws, and a canvas tarp covering something nobody ever really understood.

“It’s just an old generator,” Sam’s mom had said once, but Sam knew better.

It wasn’t.

It was the thing Grandpa Ray called the Gate.

Sam had helped build it — not as a kid, but as a young man, fresh out of college and eager to understand the mechanics behind Grandpa’s cryptic words. Tightening screws, soldering wires, winding coils. Grandpa Ray was patient, teaching with the deliberate precision of a man who knew what was at stake.

“Every machine’s got a soul if you build it with love,” he told Sam once, tightening a bolt on a gleaming brass flywheel.

Sam thought it was just Grandpa’s way of romanticizing his work.

But then Grandpa said things that sounded more like warnings.

“You ever notice clocks only go forward when someone’s watching?”

“That’s because most folks walk through time like it’s a hallway,” he said. “But it’s more like a garden hose — you just gotta bend it hard enough to make it spray somewhere else.”

Sam smiled wryly.

“Like water fighting to get out?”

Ray’s eyes darkened, serious. “Catch time off guard, and it’ll let something slip.”

He tapped the Gate’s casing with a finger. “You can bend the line if you love someone hard enough. But only once. After that, it’ll bite.”

Sam didn’t fully grasp it then.

He did now.

It wasn’t a project. It was a promise.

And now, with Grandpa Ray gone, it was a door left open.

Sam stared at the Gate’s blinking green bulb. His pulse quickened. He’d learned the mechanics. He could do this.

He set the date — twelve days ago, the day before Grandpa’s last stroke.

He didn’t go back to stop it.

He went to bring him home.

The machine groaned like a beast waking from a long sleep. The shed filled with a thick, syrupy heat, and the radio crackled to life, playing a scratchy Glenn Miller tune before cutting off.

Then, there he was.

Grandpa Ray.

Alive. Smiling like a man who thought he’d cheated the reaper.

Sam embraced him so tightly his ribs ached.

“I got you back,” Sam said, his voice breaking.

Ray laughed, but it was thin. His eyes were distant, like he was watching a ghost in the room.

But the world wasn’t right.

The clocks chimed 11:17 every hour.

Missy, the dog, refused to enter the shed.

Sam’s mom walked right past Ray without a glance.

“Mom?” Sam asked, alarmed. “Didn’t you see Grandpa?”

She shook her head, confused. “Sam, Grandpa passed away.”

Ray sat quietly in the corner, his smile never quite reaching his eyes.

Days passed.

Ray grew quieter. His laughter stopped. He stared at the old TV, lips moving as if reciting forgotten prayers.

“I’m slipping,” he told Sam one evening. “Pulled me too far. Time doesn’t like being bitten.”

Sam pleaded, “Stay.”

Ray shook his head. “Love isn’t the same as belonging.”

Strange things happened.

One night, Sam saw Grandpa’s reflection in the mirror — grinning behind him — even though Ray was outside feeding the birds.

Sam’s memory began to fade. Names, dates, even the sound of Ray’s voice.

Even though Ray sat beside him.

Finally, the day came when the sky was rust-colored and the air thickened.

Ray said, “You gotta send me back. Before the Gate bites someone else.”

Sam shook his head. “You’ll die.”

Ray smiled sadly. “I’m already dead. You just dragged me across the finish line.”

They walked to the shed together.

Inside, the Gate hummed, pulsing with light.

Ray turned to Sam. “You did something impossible. I love you for it.”

“Then stay.”

“I can’t. Not where I don’t belong.”

He handed Sam a silver harmonica, worn and dented.

“Play it sometimes.”

Then stepped into the light and was gone.

Sam sat on the porch long after the machine quieted. The air settled. Missy slept again by the shed.

He never told anyone.

But sometimes, in the fading light, Sam played the harmonica — a slow, soft song — a tune of memory, love, and the cost of bending time.

Epilogue: The First Door

Weeks later, while cleaning the shed, Sam found an old red toolbox beneath the workbench.

Inside, a yellowed photograph caught his eye — a young Ray, barely twenty, arm around a laughing woman in a polka-dot dress, a baby stroller just out of frame.

On the back: “Lena. 1949. Last summer.”

Tucked behind it was a folded note:

The line bent. I pulled her out of the fire. But something else went in.

She wasn’t the same.

And neither was I.

So I put her back.

She smiled before she disappeared.

That smile haunts me longer than any grave.

Love is a door.

Open it only once.

— R.R.

Sam folded the note carefully, clutching the harmonica.

“Now I get it, Grandpa.”

He stood there a moment longer, the harmonica warm in his hand and the late afternoon sun dipping low behind the old oak trees. Somewhere in the distance, the faint sound of a clock chiming echoed through the quiet evening air, steady and sure.

For the first time in weeks, Sam felt a calm settle deep inside him — like the past and present were finally resting side by side.