The old man shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but his eyes stayed on his cup a beat too long. I didn’t push it. It wasn’t my business, and he didn’t seem to want it to be.
When I stood up to leave, I knocked on the doorframe.
“Hey, next time you get groceries, just call me. Save your back,” I joked.
“I wouldn’t want to bother you.”
“Then don’t think of it as a bother.”
“He calls sometimes.”
My neighbor smiled at that, slow and a little crooked.
I walked back across the strip of grass between our houses with my hands in my pockets, thinking I’d done a small, decent thing on a slow Sunday, nothing more. I had no idea that one cup of coffee had just started a clock that would run for the next 12 years.
Twelve years. That’s how long one helpful Sunday turned into a quiet ritual neither of us ever named.
Ezra’s health slipped in small ways at first. A slower walk to the mailbox. A hand that trembled when he poured coffee. Then driving became too much for him, and I started picking up his groceries every Sunday without either of us making it official.
