The apartment was silent that Tuesday evening, the kind of silence that made the hum of the refrigerator sound louder than it should.
I sat at my small kitchen table with overdue bills spread across it like a hand of cards I could never win.
On the shelf above the stove, a faded photograph of my parents watched over me, just as it had every night since I was seven.
My name is Emily, and I had been exhausted for as long as I could remember.
After my parents died, my grandmother, Margaret, took me in. She owned a chain of grocery stores across three counties. There was money in the family, but I never touched a dollar of it.
I still remembered the day I told her I had been accepted to college.
“That’s nice, Emily,” she said, not lifting her eyes from the newspaper.
“I was hoping… maybe you could help with tuition?”
“I’m not your mom. I’m not your dad. Don’t expect me to act like I am.”
So I worked two jobs and signed student loans I was still paying off six years later.
I rubbed my eyes and looked again at the photograph of my parents.
“I’m trying, Mom,” I whispered. “I really am.”
My phone buzzed against the table. The screen showed Grandma’s house. I almost let it ring.
“Hello?”
“Emily, it’s Linda.”
Linda had worked as my grandmother’s housekeeper since before I was born. She always answered first, always with that careful, measured voice.
“Your grandmother wants to speak with you,” Linda continued. “Hold on.”
There was a long shuffle, the creak of a chair, and then a voice thinner than I remembered.
“Emily.”
“Grandma. Are you okay?”
“No. I’m not.”
I tightened my grip on the phone. She never wasted words. She never had.
“The doctors say I don’t have long,” Grandma continued. “A year, maybe two.”
I had no idea what to say. We had not spoken in eight months. Before that, there had only been birthday cards with one line written inside.
“I’m sorry,” I finally managed.
“Don’t be sorry. Be useful. I need someone to take care of me,” she said. “Linda can’t do it alone. I want you to come home.”
“Grandma, I have work, I have—”
“Emily.” Her voice sliced through mine. “If you come, everything I have goes to you. The house. The stores. All of it. Every penny.”
I stared down at the bills covering my table.
A few short years of caring for a woman who had never once told me she loved me, exchanged for a life where I might finally stop drowning.
“Why now?” I asked quietly. “Why me?”
There was a pause on the line.
A long one.
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