The brochure for the Whispering Pines assisted living facility sat on my laminate countertop, right next to the butter dish. Clara had already circled the monthly cost of three thousand four hundred dollars in thick red ink.
“Well, now, Clara,” I said, pouring the dark roast into her ceramic mug. “That is more than your father and I paid for this entire house in sixty-nine.”
“The market is different now, Mom,” Clara said.
She twisted her gold wedding ring around her finger, her eyes darting to her phone as it buzzed against the wood of the table.
“You cannot keep managing this place alone,” Clara said, her words rushing together. “What if you fall on the cellar stairs?”
“I have not fallen in sixty-eight years,” I said.
“That is not a statistic, Mom, it is just luck.”
Clara took a rapid sip of her coffee and set the mug down with a hard click that rattled the spoon.
“I have to get to the office, but you need to look at those floor plans today,” she said, reaching for her leather purse.
She was out the back door before the grandfather clock in the hallway finished striking eight.
She left her coffee half-full and cooling on the counter.
I drove my Buick to the SuperMart on Elm Street.
The familiar smell of floor wax and overripe bananas hit me the moment the automatic doors slid open.
Arthur Pendelton stood by the row of metal shopping carts, adjusting the collar of his blue store vest with a quick, nervous tug.
His eyes looked heavy, the skin beneath them gray and shadowed.
“Morning, neighbor,” Arthur said, pulling a metal cart free from the line and pushing it toward my hands.
“Well, now, Arthur, you look like you stayed up for the late show,” I said.
“Just some corporate inventory adjustments, neighbor,” Arthur said.
He pulled at his collar again, his eyes scanning the lobby.
“They had us here until midnight counting cans of soup,” he said.
I took the handle of the cart, the metal cold under my palms.
I walked down aisle four, picking up a box of chamomile tea and a small plastic bear of clover honey
