That mattered.
After my mother died in 2022, people kept asking if Dad planned to move closer to me or maybe into assisted living.
He refused immediately.
“I’m not leaving this house,” he said.
And honestly, I understood.
The little brick home off Friendly Avenue held forty years of their life together. The kitchen still smelled faintly like my mother’s cinnamon bread if the windows stayed closed long enough. Her gardening gloves still hung near the garage door. Her favorite coffee mug remained beside the sink because Dad couldn’t bring himself to move it.
Grief settled into the house quietly.
But so did Miss Penny.
My mother adopted her in 2014 from a rescue near Winston-Salem after deciding my father needed companionship whether he admitted it or not.
Dad pretended to resist.
