“The doctors say I don’t have long,” Grandma continued. “A year, maybe two.”
“Your grandmother wants to speak with you.”
I did not know what to say. We had not spoken in eight months. Before that, it had been birthday cards with a single line of writing inside.
“I’m sorry,” I finally managed.
“Don’t be sorry. Be useful. I need someone to take care of me,” she said. “Linda can’t do it alone. I want you to come home.”
“Grandma, I have work, I have—”
“Emily.” Her voice cut through mine. “If you come, everything I have goes to you. The house. The stores. All of it. Every penny.”
“Don’t be sorry. Be useful. I need someone to take care of me.”
I stared at the bills on my table.
A few short years of caring for a woman who had never once told me she loved me, in exchange for a life free from drowning.
“Why now?” I asked quietly. “Why me?”
There was a pause on the line. A long one.
“Because you’re the only one left,” she said.
Then the line went silent, and I sat there in the dim kitchen, wondering if what I had just agreed to was love, or just the last transaction we would ever make.
“Because you’re the only one left.”
The drive back to Grandma’s old house felt heavier than I expected, her frail voice from that phone call still echoing in my ears like a debt I had agreed to pay.
