Her expression changed slightly.
For an instant, she looked less like an elderly woman shopping for groceries and more like someone who had walked into an unfamiliar room and discovered that the door behind her had disappeared.
Then she smiled.
“There’s no harm in keeping a list.”
“No,” Eleanor said. “There isn’t.”
That afternoon, Eleanor found a blue winter coat hanging inside her grandmother’s wardrobe.
It was an old-fashioned wool coat with a velvet collar, the kind Margaret had worn every Christmas when Eleanor was a child.
Eleanor remembered hiding sweets in its pockets and falling asleep against its soft fabric during church services.
One pocket contained a peppermint.
The other held a small envelope.
Inside was a photograph of Eleanor at eight years old, missing her front teeth, sitting on Arthur’s shoulders.
On the back, Margaret had written:
Our girl. Summer, 2002.
Beneath it, in newer handwriting, she had added:
If I forget who she is, tell her I loved her before she could say my name.
Eleanor sat on the edge of the bed.
For a long time, she held the photograph in both hands.
Downstairs, Margaret was humming while she peeled carrots.
Eleanor could hear the knife tapping against the chopping board, slowly and unevenly.
She put the photograph back in its envelope and went to help.
Chapter Four – Christmas Eve
By December, Margaret could no longer safely cook alone.
She sometimes mistook Eleanor for her daughter-in-law, who had died eighteen years earlier. On other days, she recognized everyone and became irritated when they spoke too slowly or offered unnecessary assistance.
Daniel had begun sleeping on the sofa downstairs because Margaret occasionally wandered through the house at night.
Eleanor rearranged her work schedule and returned home every other weekend.
It was not enough.
One Saturday, she arrived to find her father asleep at the kitchen table, his cheek resting against a stack of medical paperwork. The kettle had boiled dry, and Margaret was standing in the garden without a coat, trying to dig through frozen soil.
Eleanor persuaded her grandmother inside, wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, and made tea.
Then she woke her father.
“You can’t keep doing this alone.”
“I’m managing.”
“You’re exhausted.”
“I’m fine.”
“Dad.”
He looked at her.
She had not raised her voice, but something in it made him stop arguing.
“We need help.”
He rubbed his face.
“I know.”
It was the first time he had admitted it.
They arranged for a home-care assistant to visit during the day. Eleanor began working remotely from the house for several weeks each month.
There were difficult mornings when Margaret accused strangers of stealing her belongings, and afternoons when she refused to eat because she believed she had already had lunch.
