I signed something on his clipboard and took the bag. He walked back down my concrete steps, past my azaleas and the little flag I keep in the planter on Memorial Day, got in his car, and drove off.

Inside the bag was a tiny bottle of champagne and a T-shirt that said, in bright green letters,
I’m feeling lucky.

It felt absurd. I set the bottle on the counter near the toaster and draped the shirt over the back of a kitchen chair. Then I noticed the front door still hanging halfway open.

I shut it carefully and locked it. Once. Then again.

That night, the phone rang.

Derek.

I stared at his name on the screen. My hand hovered over the answer button.

I let it go to voicemail.

Then Rachel called.

Then Derek again.

Then Zoe.

The fourth time it rang, I picked up. Rachel’s voice poured out, syrup-sweet and too bright.

“Mom. Hi. I’ve been
thinking
about you. How are you feeling?”

“The same as I did yesterday,” I said.

She laughed, a little high-pitched giggle I hadn’t heard since she was a teenager pretending she hadn’t broken curfew.

“No, I mean… have you had any good news lately?”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Something exciting, something life-changing.”

I pictured her walking circles around her pristine open-concept kitchen in Oregon, quartz countertops gleaming, stainless steel appliances humming, phone pressed to her ear like a trader on Wall Street about to place a high-risk bet.

“Maybe I got a new kettle,” I said.

She didn’t laugh this time.

“Well,” she offered finally, scrambling. “I’m just really glad you’re okay. We should talk more. You know, stay close. Family’s everything, right?”

“Right,” I said.

Then we hung up and the house went still again.

The next day, a floral arrangement arrived at my door with a card from Derek’s marketing firm printed in bold, expensive ink.

Lilies and white roses. The kind people send after surgery or when someone dies.

A long email from Rachel hit my inbox. The subject line read,
Thinking About Your Future and Ours.

And a card from Zoe arrived, pastel and glittery, the kind you pick up in the checkout aisle at Target. Inside, in her looping handwriting, it said,
You’re the best, Grandma. Maybe we can do brunch soon. My treat or yours.

None of them had visited when Walter died.

None of them had called the night I slipped on the back steps last winter and had to crawl inside on hands and knees to reach the phone on the wall like some desperate animal.

But now?

Now I was interesting.

Now I was worth something.

That evening, I sat on my small front porch in my metal chair with its peeling white paint, watching the last pink streaks peel off the Carolina sky. The cicadas hummed in the trees along the street, loud and relentless in the sticky Southern air.