“Okafor thinks so.
The documentation is strong.”
She nodded.
Didn’t ask again.
On Saturday morning, I drove her back to Dellwood Lane.
Patricia was in her front yard when we pulled up, deadheading roses along the fence.
She waved.
Grandma waved back.
The front porch looked different with only one green chair.
The absence of the other was loud in a way that was hard to explain — like a gap in a sentence where a word used to be.
Grandma stood at the bottom of the porch steps and looked at it.
“I know where the other one is,” I said.
“The storage facility.
Okafor said we can retrieve everything once they’ve catalogued it as evidence.
A few more weeks.”
“I know.” She climbed the steps slowly, one hand on the railing.
She sat down in the remaining chair.
Put her hands on the armrests.
Looked out at the street.
I sat on the top porch step, my back against the railing post.
Patricia came over after a few minutes, still wearing her garden gloves.
She didn’t say anything.
She just sat down on the step beside me.
The three of us were quiet for a while.
A dog walked by with its owner.
A child on a bicycle.
The oak tree on the corner moved in a slow wind.
“Eleanor,” Patricia said finally, “do you remember the summer your husband planted that oak?”
Grandma looked at the tree.
“He planted it the year Ivan was born.
Said every child deserved a tree.”
Patricia smiled.
“He carried it home in the back of his station wagon.
Wrapped in burlap.
I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever seen.”
“He was very serious about it,” Grandma said.
“He staked it for two years.
Watered it every evening.”
“Look at it now.”
We all looked at it.
It was enormous.
Its canopy reached halfway across the street.
“He would have liked today,” Grandma said quietly.
“The light.”
Nobody argued with that.
After a while, Patricia went back to her roses.
I stayed on the step.
Grandma reached over and put her hand on my shoulder — just for a moment, just briefly — and then took it back and folded her hands in her lap.
