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.”
At the diner, Joe noticed I had been rushing out after shifts.
“You got yourself a girlfriend now?”
“I’m helping Mrs. Rhode.”
He nearly dropped the coffee pot laughing.
“That old battle-axe? Helping her with what?”
I told him everything about our arrangement. By the end, he nodded slowly.
“Well. That’s weird as hell. But she likes you. That’s not nothing.”
I shrugged like it meant nothing, but I thought about it all day. I had no idea what family was supposed to feel like. Maybe it felt like sitting in a warm living room with an old woman who insulted your hair, served terrible meatloaf, and still remembered your feet got cold. Then came the morning I found her. I had been caring for her for a little over a year. She didn’t answer the door, so I let myself in with the spare key. The TV was still on. A cup of tea sat cold beside her chair. Mrs. Rhode sat motionless. I knew before I touched her hand, but I said her name anyway. Then I called for help, dropped to my knees beside her chair, and cried harder than I had cried in years.
The funeral felt like a bad dream. I stood in the back, feeling like I had no right to grieve as deeply as I did. Then came the will reading, the humiliation, and the awful belief that Mrs. Rhode had lied to me—not just about the house and money, but about caring for me at all. The next morning, someone pounded on my door. I opened it half-dead with exhaustion. Mrs. Rhode’s lawyer stood there holding a dented metal lunchbox.
“What do you want?”
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