The boot prints in the wet soil between our driveways were too large to belong to Dorothy, and they stopped right at her basement window. I stood at my kitchen counter, chopping celery for a pot roast I knew she would only eat half of, while my mother’s voice buzzed through the phone speaker.
“She is eighty-three, Greta,” my mother said, her voice thin over the long-distance line from Florida.
I adjusted my wristwatch, sliding the leather strap up my arm where the skin was cold. “She still drives her Buick to the pharmacy, but she missed her Tuesday hair appointment today.”
“People miss appointments,” my mother said. “It does not mean she has stopped taking her pills.”
I wiped the celery knife on a dishtowel, watching the water pool around the sink drain. “She has lived next door to me for four years, and she has never missed a Tuesday. Not even when we had that ice storm two years ago.”
I was cutting the carrots now, making sure they were exactly the size she preferred, soft enough for her to chew without her dentures getting loose. I looked at the kitchen calendar on the wall, where every single Tuesday had a small hand-drawn star on it, marking our dinner night.
“She was leaning on the kitchen counter when I saw her yesterday,” I continued, scraping the chopped vegetables into the heavy iron pot. “She did not want to admit she was having trouble standing, but I could tell. Her left knee has been acting up since the weather turned cold.”
“Dorothy has her own family, Greta,” my mother said. “Or at least, she has that cousin in Ohio. You are not her daughter.”
“Her cousin has not visited since the Thursday before Easter,” I said. “I am the one who checks her mail. I am the one who knows she takes her blue pills in the morning and her yellow ones at night.”
“You are hovering again,” my mother said.
“You’re making yourself indispensable because you’re afraid of what happens when you’re not,” my mother added, her tone softening in a way that made me want to slam the phone down. “You have been lonely since you bought that house, and you are using that poor woman as a shield so you do not have to go out and meet people.”
“That is not true,” I said, though my fingers immediately went to my watch strap, twisting the buckle until the metal pinched my skin. “She needs me. Her family is in Ohio and they do not care if she eats nothing but toast and tea.”
“I am cooking for her,” I said. “She expects me at six with the grocery slip.”
“Let the woman breathe,” my mother said. “You have your own life to live, though you act like you are seventy-five yourself.”
I ended the call without saying goodbye and set the phone face down on the laminate. The silence in my house was heavy, the kind that makes the hum of the old refrigerator sound like an accusation.
The yellow glow of a single streetlamp at dusk barely reached Dorothy’s porch as I walked across the grass carrying a plastic grocery bag and a warm container of pot roast.
Under the heavy terracotta planter by the top step, the brass spare key sat exactly where she had kept it since her husband died. I checked the corner of the planter with the toe of my shoe to make sure the metal edge was still hidden.
Near the door sat a large cardboard box. The shipping label on top was marked overnight delivery, costing sixteen dollars to ship, but the sender was listed as a medical supply warehouse in Indianapolis.
I reached out and pulled the rusty screen door latch, which let out a sharp, metallic screech that usually brought Dorothy straight to the hallway.
