“That’s kind, Emily,” she said without looking up from her newspaper.
“I was hoping… perhaps you could help me pay the tuition fees?”
“I am neither your mother nor your father. Don’t expect me to act as if I were.”
So I held two jobs and took out loans that I was still paying back six years later.
We had money, but I never saw a single dollar of it.
I rubbed my eyes and looked again at the photo of my parents.
“I’m trying, Mom,” I whispered. “Really.”
My phone vibrated against the table. The screen displayed Grandma’s house. I almost didn’t answer.
“Good morning?”
“Emily, it’s Linda.”
Linda had been my grandmother’s housekeeper since before I was born. She was always the first to answer the phone, always with that calm and measured tone.
My phone vibrated against the table.
“Your grandmother wants to talk to you,” Linda continued. “Wait.”
There was a long rustling, the creaking of a chair, then a voice more faint than I remembered.
“Emilie.”
“Grandma, are you alright?”
“No. I am not.”
I gripped the phone tighter. She wasn’t wasting her words. She never had before.
“The doctors say I don’t have much time left,” Grandma continued. “A year, maybe two.”
“Your grandmother wants to talk to you.”
I didn’t know what to say. We hadn’t spoken for eight months. Before that, there had only been birthday cards with a single sentence written inside.
“I’m sorry,” I finally managed to say.
“Don’t apologize. Be helpful. I need someone to take care of me,” she said. “Linda can’t manage on her own. I want you to come home.”
“Grandma, I have work to do, I have…”
“Emily.” Her voice pierced mine. “If you come, everything I own is yours. The house. The shops. Everything. Down to the last penny.”
“Don’t be sorry. Be helpful. I need someone to take care of me.”
I stared at the banknotes lying on my table.
A few short years taking care of a woman who had never once told me she loved me, in exchange for a life safe from drowning.
“Why now?” I asked softly. “Why me?”
There was silence at the other end of the line. A long silence.
“Because you’re the only one left,” she said.
Then silence fell on the other end of the line, and I sat there in the dimly lit kitchen, wondering if what I had just agreed to was love, or simply the last transaction we would ever make.
“Because you’re the only one left.”
The journey back to my grandmother’s old house seemed heavier than expected; her frail voice, heard on the phone, still echoed in my ears like a debt I had agreed to repay.
I unpacked my suitcase in the guest room and told myself that this was love, not a transaction.
