“Take care of Grandma.”
When I got back from my business trip, those were the first words that punched me in the chest. The note was sitting in the middle of our kitchen table in our little rental house on the edge of a small town in Ohio, held down by a salt shaker like it might try to run away. Two sets of handwriting—my husband’s messy scrawl and my mother-in-law’s stiff, spidery cursive.
We need a vacation to clear our heads. We’ve gone away for a few days. Don’t call.
Don’t bother us. Take good care of that old woman in the back room. —Malik & Mom
My fingers tightened around the paper until it crumpled.
For a second, the world tilted. Then one thought slammed through the fog of exhaustion. Grandma.
I dropped my suitcase where it was in the driveway and hurried up the porch steps. The only sound that broke the stillness of that night was the rattle of my suitcase wheels over the cracked concrete and the distant hiss of cars on the highway that cut past our town. Normally, the porch light was always on.
Around here, people flew the Stars and Stripes on their front porches and left their lights burning like a silent neighborhood watch. My mother-in-law, Mrs. Eloise, nagged me constantly if I forgot to flip the switch at sunset.
That night, the house was swallowed in darkness, our little white-siding ranch sitting at the end of the cul-de-sac like an abandoned farmhouse. No porch light, no glow from the TV, no sound of Malik’s video games or Mrs. Eloise’s favorite true-crime shows drifting through the door.
My body ached from the six-hour drive back from a client visit in Indiana. My shoulders were knotted, my legs stiff, my brain running on gas-station coffee and stale donuts. The only thing that had kept me going on that endless stretch of I-70 was the image of Malik meeting me at the door with at least a half-smile, maybe a glass of cold water.
Just a sign that my husband had missed me. Instead, I fumbled in my pocket for the emergency key I always carried, my fingers numb and clumsy. The key slid into the lock with a sharp metallic click.
The hinges groaned when I pushed the door open. The air inside hit me like a damp wall—stale and heavy, with the faint sour smell of dust and something else I couldn’t place. No TV blaring sports.
No microwave humming. No clinking dishes. No high-pitched nagging from the woman who liked to remind me that I was “lucky” to have her son.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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