Ev Hillman and Hilly Brown’s grandparent-grandchild relationship

Ev Hillman and Hilly Brown’s grandparent-grandchild relationship is a bond of practical care and persistent attention, tested when Hilly falls into a profound, unexplained decline amid David’s disappearance. Ev removes him from Haven in search of help, stays beside him in Derry, and continues trying to reach him as Hilly’s waking responses fade. The relationship’s defining moment comes when Ev asks again where David is and Hilly answers with the name of a distant world and a fragment of the Tommyknocker rhyme: the boy offers a clue, but not a way back to ordinary conversation.

Family Bond and the Decision to Leave

Ev is Hilly’s grandfather and one of the few people in Haven whom the town’s spreading change does not seem to absorb. When Hilly becomes unresponsive, Ev tells Ruth McCausland that the boy has drifted off again: his eyes are open, but he is not truly present. He decides to take Hilly to Derry, while Hilly’s parents, Bryant and Marie, stay in Haven. Ev’s choice is practical and urgent; he believes leaving town may help, and he wants Hilly assessed beyond the reach of the crisis unfolding there.

Ruth recognizes that Ev is different from the people around him. She can barely read him, as she can Bobbi Anderson’s friend, and concludes that whatever is happening in Haven is happening around Ev rather than making him part of it. That relative distance gives him room to act on Hilly’s behalf. After Ev leaves, Ruth watches his old Valiant head toward Bangor with Hilly propped in the passenger seat, an image that makes visible both the grandfather’s protective effort and the boy’s helplessness.

Care at the Hospital

Ev’s departure from Haven does not restore Hilly. In Derry, Ev takes a furnished room and spends his days in Room 371 of Derry Home Hospital, watching over his grandson; at night he remains nearby until hospital staff send him away. He is deeply unsettled, but his attention stays fixed on Hilly. The doctors describe the boy’s brain patterns as resembling deep sleep rather than coma, yet Ev cannot find comfort in the distinction. To him, the essential fact is that Hilly is slipping away.

Hilly’s decline becomes measurable in the pattern of his days. At first he can answer simple questions, but more complicated ones confuse him; he complains of a headache and cannot remember the magic show. His sense of time is also disturbed: he seems to believe his birthday was only a week earlier. On the first hospital day he sleeps eleven hours out of twenty-four; the following day he sleeps fourteen, and his waking periods become more confused. When a child psychologist asks his middle name, Hilly answers with David’s middle name, Jonathan. The response links the brothers even as Hilly’s own awareness grows less reliable.

Soon Hilly is sleeping almost around the clock. Sometimes his eyes open and appear to look toward Ev or a nurse, but he smiles and drifts back to sleep rather than engaging with them. For Ev, the clinical terms—deep sleep, coma, or autism—cannot explain the lived reality of losing access to his grandson. His vigil is an act of care in a situation where ordinary conversation and ordinary reassurance have largely disappeared.

The Question of David

Ev’s care for Hilly is inseparable from the disappearance of David. During a nightmare, Ev imagines David calling to him from an inhospitable, unfamiliar place and saying that he is frightened and cannot find his way home. The dream intensifies Ev’s anxiety, but it does not give him reliable knowledge of David’s location. It does, however, bring the missing boy’s plight into the hospital room, where Ev is already watching Hilly recede from ordinary awareness.

After waking, Ev goes to Hilly and asks where his brother is. He has asked before, but this time Hilly opens his eyes and answers calmly and clearly: “Altair-4,” followed by “David is on Altair-4 and there’s Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, knocking at the door.” Hilly then closes his eyes and returns to deep sleep. The moment briefly reverses the usual direction of care: the grandson who has been fading becomes the source of a precise, startling disclosure. Yet the answer does not restore their relationship to everyday speech. Ev is left standing motionless, with a clue about David and no continuing exchange with Hilly.

The Bond Under Pressure

Ev’s actions show devotion through decisions and presence rather than through an ability to cure or understand what is happening. He takes Hilly out of Haven, remains with him through long hospital days, and keeps addressing him even when the boy cannot respond. His hope that distance from town might help proves unfounded, but his care persists after that hope fails. Hilly’s brief statement about David is therefore both a revelation and a painful limit: it gives Ev information he urgently needs, while confirming how far Hilly has withdrawn from ordinary consciousness.

The relationship also places a family bond against the larger disturbance affecting Haven and its residents. Ev appears to stand outside that transformation, but he cannot protect Hilly from its consequences or bring the boy back simply by leaving town. The grandfather’s watchfulness holds the emotional line between the two brothers: he cares for Hilly at the hospital while searching for what has happened to David. Their bond becomes a quiet measure of the crisis, sustained through separation, uncertainty, and a final moment of uncanny clarity.