“Long week.”
She snorted.
“Try being eighty-five.”
That was our beginning. After that, she always asked for me. She was sharp, difficult, and impossible in a way that somehow became almost funny once you got used to her. One morning, she looked at me over her coffee.
“You ever smile, son?”
“Sometimes.”
“I doubt it.”
Another day, she frowned at my hair.
“It gets worse every time I see you.”
“Good morning to you, too.”
“Hm. Better. You almost sound alive today.”
She was not sweet, exactly, but she noticed things. And when you have spent your whole life feeling invisible, being noticed can feel dangerously close to being loved.
Part 2
One afternoon, I was walking home with grocery bags when Mrs. Rhode called to me from behind her fence.
“You live nearby, James?”
I stopped.
“A couple houses down.”
She looked me over carefully.
“You want to make some decent money, son?”
I hesitated.
“Doing what?”
She opened her front door and waved me in.
“Come help me. We’ll agree on a price. I’ll explain over tea.”
Inside, she poured tea that tasted like boiled weeds and got straight to the point.
“I’m dying.”
I nearly choked.
She rolled her eyes.
“Oh, don’t be dramatic. I’m eighty-five, not twelve. The doctor says maybe a few years, maybe less. I need help with groceries, medicine, rides, and small repairs. I don’t have anyone reliable.”
“And what do I get?”
She watched me for a moment.
“When I’m gone, what I have becomes yours. I’ll leave everything to you.”
I stared at her.
“Are you serious? You barely know me.”
“I know enough.”
It sounded ridiculous, maybe even dangerous to believe. But I needed money, and some lonely part of me wanted her to be telling the truth. So I held out my hand.
“Deal.”
At first, it was exactly what she said it would be. I drove her to appointments, picked up groceries, sorted her pills into little plastic boxes, fixed a cabinet hinge, changed lightbulbs, cleaned gutters, and took out the trash. She complained through all of it.
“You’re late.”
“It’s been four minutes.”
“Still late.”
I would tell her she was impossible, and she would answer.
“Yet you keep coming back.”
Slowly, without either of us naming it, things changed. She started asking me to stay for dinner. Her cooking was terrible, but she acted personally insulted if I said so. Once she made meatloaf so dry I had to drink three glasses of water to swallow it.
“This is awful.”
She pointed her fork at me.
“Then die hungry.”
Some evenings, we watched game shows together. She yelled at contestants like they could hear her. She told me pieces of her life, and I started telling her things I never told anyone: foster homes, learning not to get attached, never planning beyond the next rent payment because hope felt unsafe. One night, she muted the TV and looked at me hard.
“You only think about surviving next month, James. Don’t you have dreams?”
I shrugged.
“I guess I’d like to keep working at the diner. Maybe get promoted one day.”
“Well,” she said, unimpressed. “I suppose that’s something.”
That winter, she gave me a pair of green knitted socks so ugly I did not know whether to thank her or file a complaint.
“I made these,” she said, shoving them at my chest. “So your feet don’t freeze.”
