He doesn’t answer, so I follow the glow of the television screen into the living room, where I find him.
Josiah Rayburn sits in his old recliner, the same one he’s had for as long as I can remember. One of my grandmother’s hand-knitted blankets is draped across his lap—deep red and white yarn, faded with age but still unmistakably hers.
He’s watching some black-and-white Western.
The volume is loud enough to rattle the windows.
“Evenin’, Porter,” he says without turning his head.
I grin. “I see your hearing’s not that bad after all.”
He glances over with a grin, and the instant he sees me, his whole face lights up.
“I could smell the steak,” he says.
I step inside, setting the bag on the coffee table. “I thought you might be hungry.”
His eyes drop to the bag. “You thought right.”
I pull the containers out one by one—country-fried steak, mashed potatoes drowning in gravy, buttered green beans, and six biscuits.
“Joyce make it?”
Joyce is one of the chefs at the Belicourt’s Summit Grill. Country-fried steak is not on the regular menu, but on Mondays, she always prepares a couple of plates just for us.
“Yep. She made it fresh, just for you.”
He chuckles. “That fancy place, feeding an old rancher like me.”
I grab the tray table from beside the couch and set it up in front of him.
We eat like we always do—right here in the living room, watching whatever he happens to have on TV.
I dig into my own container as he cuts into the steak.
He takes one bite and closes his eyes. “Lord have mercy,” he says. “Tastes just like Della’s.”
Della Rayburn was my mother’s mother, after whom she was named, and Josiah’s wife. They were married for nearly fifty-five years before she passed away seven years ago.
“That good, huh?”
“Almost.”
We eat for a while in comfortable silence.
It’s strange how quiet this house is now.
When I was growing up, it was never like this. There was always noise and chaos—cowboys coming and going at all hours of the day, boots stomping through the mudroom, my grandmother singing in the kitchen while she cooked meals big enough to feed the ranch’s army of hands.
Now the place feels too big. Too empty.
Finally, I lean back on the couch. “How are you doing, Granddad?”
“Still kickin’.”
“How’s the knee?”
He grumbles, “Old and achy.”
