Part Two: Ivy
My daughter’s name is Ivy. She was four when Shane left. She’s nine now.
She has my dark hair and Shane’s blue eyes and a laugh that sounds exactly like her grandmother’s. Elora noticed it right away when Ivy was a baby.
“She laughs like me,” Elora would say. “Poor thing.”
After the divorce, Shane saw Ivy every other weekend. Then once a month. Then on birthdays and Christmas, when he remembered.
He married Kayla two years after our divorce. They had a baby boy. They moved to a big house on a lake north of the city.
Ivy stopped asking when her dad would come.
But Elora never stopped coming.
She came to every school play. Every soccer game. Every parent-teacher conference I couldn’t get off work for. She picked Ivy up from school on Wednesdays and took her to the library and then for ice cream.
She taught Ivy to knit. To make pie crust. To play gin rummy and cheat just a little.
I’m a respiratory therapist at Butterworth Hospital. I work twelve-hour shifts, three or four days a week. Some weeks I worked nights.
Elora filled the gaps. Without being asked. Without ever making me feel like I was imposing.
“That’s what grandmothers are for,” she’d say.
Part Three: The Call
Then one day in late September, Elora called me crying.
I was in the hospital cafeteria on my lunch break. Her name came up on my phone. Elora never called during the day. She knew my schedule.
I answered right away.
“Honey,” she said. Her voice was shaking. “I’m sorry to bother you at work.”
“Elora, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“I broke my leg,” she said. “Last week. I fell on the back steps taking out the recycling.”
I put my sandwich down.
“Last week?” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you,” she said. “But I’m having a really hard time managing on my own. I can’t do the stairs. I can’t drive. I can barely get to the bathroom.”
She started crying again.
Elora is seventy-two. She lives alone in a little two-story house in Wyoming, a suburb on the south side of Grand Rapids. The bedrooms are upstairs. The only bathroom is upstairs.
“Can’t one of your kids help?” I asked.
Elora has three children. Lisa is the oldest, forty-six, a real estate agent in Ada. Shane is the middle one, forty-three. Kenny is the youngest, thirty-nine, an insurance adjuster in Rockford.
All three of them live within thirty miles of her.
“I’ve asked all three,” Elora said quietly. “They all have their reasons why they can’t take me in.”
“What reasons?”
She didn’t answer right away.
“Lisa’s remodeling her kitchen,” she said. “Kenny’s wife doesn’t want a houseguest. And Shane—”
She stopped.
“Shane says the lake house isn’t set up for it,” she said.
God, I felt terrible for her.
Seventy-two years old. A broken leg. Three grown children within thirty miles. And not one of them would take her in.
“Listen,” I said. “Why don’t you stay with me for a while? At least until you’re back on your feet.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Elora said. “I couldn’t possibly ask you to do that.”
“You’re not asking,” I said. “I’m offering.”
She was quiet on the line for a long time.
“Are you sure?” she finally said.
“I’m sure,” I said. “Ivy would love it. And I’ve got a bedroom on the first floor.”
I didn’t think twice about it.
I should have wondered why she sounded so relieved. Like I’d said exactly what she’d been hoping for.
But I didn’t.
