I should have walked away. Promises like that always came with strings. But rent was due, my truck needed repairs, and something in her no-nonsense stare reminded me of the few foster moms who’d actually tried. “Deal,” I said.
That was the beginning.
---
For the next two and a half years, Mrs. Rhode became the center of my world. Every morning before work, I’d stop by. I’d make her coffee—black, two sugars—and help her into her wheelchair if the night had been rough on her arthritis. I learned her routines. She liked the newspaper delivered to her lap, not the table. She hated when I parked crooked in her driveway. She insisted on real butter, not margarine.
I did everything. I shopped for her groceries—organic when possible, because “that processed garbage will kill you faster than old age.” I cleaned gutters in the fall, shoveled snow in winter, mowed the lawn in spring. I drove her to specialists in the city, sat through long appointments, and memorized her medication schedule. Her house had stairs, so I carried her up and down when her legs gave out.
She complained constantly.
“James, you parked like a blind man again.”
“Those socks don’t match, boy. Fix it.”
“You call that soup? Tastes like dishwater.”
But there were cracks in the armor. One bitter January evening, after I’d spent three hours clearing ice from her porch, she handed me a pair of thick, ugly green knitted socks.
“Made them myself,” she muttered, not meeting my eyes. “Your feet always look cold. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”
I wore them every night after that. They were scratchy and uneven, but they were the first gift I’d received in years that wasn’t from a charity drive.
Evenings became our ritual. After dinner—which I usually cooked—we’d sit on the porch or in her living room. She’d tell stories about her late husband, Harold, a mechanic who could fix anything. About raising three children who all moved away and rarely called. About the town’s history, the scandals, the quiet kindnesses.
