I took care of my 85-year-old neighbor for her inheritance, but she left me nothing — then her lawyer knocked the next morning with a dented lunchbox and a key I wasn’t supposed to recognize.

“James. You look tired enough to fall face-first into my waffle.”

“Long week.”

She snorted.

“Try being eighty-five.”

That was our beginning. After that, she always asked for me. She was sharp, difficult, and impossible in a way that somehow became almost funny once you got used to her. One morning, she looked at me over her coffee.

“You ever smile, son?”

“Sometimes.”

“I doubt it.”

Another day, she frowned at my hair.

“It gets worse every time I see you.”