Page 8 of Grave Beginnings

Peanut Butter chirped at him, offering a long list of complaints while I made my way to the kitchen to check the fridge and cupboard.

“Don’t listen to a word he says. He had a pretty, young maiden giving him love the entire time I was gone.” The fridge was near bare, as were the cupboards. I sighed and opened my phone to place a huge order for delivery. I hesitated to go out and grocery shop as even the trip out of my apartment down to get the mail had been filled with unwanted attention due to my newmark.

“How’s Nikki?”

“She’s good. In a K-pop phase, talking about which boy band member is eating what and all that. I can’t keep up. Why is everything empty, Grandpa?” I asked as I copied my normal list for his auto delivery that arrived every Tuesday morning while I was working so he’d never be without food. “I have you set up on an auto delivery. Where did all that go?”

“Some of the neighbors… not everyone has help.”

Grandpa lived in a retirement community. Many of his neighbors were around his age, and some should have been in assisted living but couldn’t afford it. I knew a lot of them didn’t have families who checked on them often. Leave it to my grandpa to take care of the whole freaking building.

“Grandpa,” I sighed, unable to scold him for taking care of others when they needed it. Working in homicide as long as I had, I knew how rare a trait it was for anyone to think of others at all. “Please make sure you take care of yourself first.” What if something happened to me? Who would take care of Grandpa then?

He rocked Peanut Butter and waved away my words, as though it didn’t matter. “I’ve got plenty.”

“I’ll order extra for some of your neighbors.” Even I couldn’t afford to feed everyone, but I tripled the number of items on my list and offered a huge tip for faster delivery. The pay bump hadto be good for something, even if it was taking care of my grandpa and all his elderly neighbors. More than enough to share. “Don’t give it all away before your next delivery.”

He patted me on the arm as I walked by to pull spare bedding out of the closet and make up the pullout couch.

I threw together a giant crockpot of chicken pot pie when the food arrived, and made an entire tray of biscuits to act as the crust. Grandpa ladled out a few plastic bowls full for neighbors, and added biscuits. I would have offered to pass them around, but when I’d been out in the lobby gathering the groceries, more than one passerby had focused on my arm, and even the delivery girl had been eager to get away.

Grandpa passed out food to three different neighbors while I stayed out of sight. I fished a piece of chicken out of my bowl to share with Peanut Butter.

Grandpa’s phone rang. I listened to it dance, wondering who else had his number, but didn’t retrieve it as I tried to give the old man some semblance of privacy. Did he have a new lady friend? Would I be ready for that? It hadn’t been a year yet.

The phone stopped. Grandpa reappeared and retrieved his bowl, dunking his biscuit in the sauce to let it get soggy as he sank down onto the couch beside me.

“Life with dentures. Don’t recommend it, my boy,” Grandpa said. “Take care of your teeth.”

“I do. I promise. Two cleanings a year, brush and floss every day. Even have one of those water things.”

His phone rang again. He put the bowl on the side table and tried to get up.

“Let me grab it for you,” I said and leapt up to get his phone from his nightstand. I handed it over and picked up my bowl, dunked my biscuit in it, and took a bite. Maybe Grandpa was on to something.

“Hello?” Grandpa said into the phone.

“Hello?” A voice on the other side blazed through the phone, volume up all the way.

“Do you have your hearing aid in, Grandpa?” I asked.

“I do. It’s on,” he said. “Hello?”

“Grandpa?” The voice on the other side of the line said, and I froze.

“Ivan?” Grandpa asked. He pulled the phone away from his ear and glanced at the number. The screen ID said Regions Hospital.

“Uh…” I said.

Grandpa put the phone back to his ear. “Ivan? Are you okay?”

“They won’t let me out unless I’m with an adult,” a disgruntled voice on the other side of the line said. “Mom and dad won’t…” He sniffled. My heart leapt into my throat. I’d never even met Ivan. Mom had gone through extensive IVF to get pregnant with what they called their miracle baby. Never mind that I’d already been in the world sixteen years and they’d cast me to the curb. Two years after I’d been cast out, Ivan had been born. Small and sort of sickly as a child, all I knew of him at all was from photos and stories from Grandma and Grandpa. Though, they had limited access to Ivan since they refused to treat me as an abomination. My parents hadn’t even come to Grandma’s funeral. I’d never been as angry as I was that day.

“Are you at the hospital, Ivy? Regions came up on the display,” Grandpa told him.

“Yeah. Phone is dead. I can leave, but not without an adult…”

He was what, fifteen? Sixteen? My gut churned with anxiety. Had my parents done the same thing to him they had to me? I picked up my bowl and grabbed Grandpa’s too, taking them both to the kitchen. I turned the crockpot to warm, then put the bowls in the microwave as Grandpa stumbled to find his keys.