“I’m fine.”
“You’re eighty-one and living in a house with stairs you can barely climb.”
“I still climb ’em.”
“For now.”
He sets his fork down slowly. “I ain’t leaving this house.”
Stubborn.
“This is our home,” he says.
“I know.”
“Your grandmother died here, and I mean to take my last breath right here too. So, stop asking.”
I soften a little.
“It’s just walls, Granddad. You carry her with you, no matter where you lay your head.”
I lean forward, elbows on my knees.
“My house in Moose is five minutes from downtown,” I say carefully. “Everything’s close. Grocery store. Pharmacy. Hospital.”
He waves a hand. “I don’t need all that.”
“You might.”
“I’ve got Martha.”
Martha is the housekeeper I pay to keep around. She cooks, cleans, and drives him to appointments. But she’s not here at night. And that’s the part that keeps me up sometimes.
“Granddad—”
“No.”
“Just hear me out, please.”
“I said no.”
I sigh. “Okay, fine. Don’t sell. You can die out here alone, you stubborn ass.”
“That’s right,” he quips.
“But we’ve got to make some changes,” I say.
He eyes me suspiciously. “What kind of changes?”
I nod toward the staircase. “You can’t keep climbing those.”
“I’ve been climbing them for sixty years.”
“And you’re about to have a knee replacement.”
He grumbles under his breath.
“I’ve got an idea.”
