“I meant pancakes. So I’m going to head to the kitchen, where pancakes get made.”
“Take your time, honey. I’m comfortable.”
She reaches for her coffee, and as she does, the bedroom door eases itself closed with a soft, deliberate click.
Gram pauses, cup halfway to her lips. “Goodness, that door,” she says.
“The latch is finicky,” I say too fast. “It drifts. I keep meaning to fix it.”
Gram turns in her chair to look at the closed door.
She studies it for a long, terrible moment.
Then she turns back to face me, and there’s something knowing in her expression that makes my pulse skip.
“Drifty doors,” she says mildly. “Or a haunting.” She takes a sip of her coffee andwinks at me.
“Ha! Yes, or that!” I flee to the kitchen and yank open the fridge, grabbing milk and pancake mix with trembling hands.
Pancakes.
I can make pancakes.
I’ve made pancakes a thousand times.
My hands know the motions even when my brain is short-circuiting.
I focus on my pancakes with the intensity of a brain surgeon.
One flip. Two flips.
The batter is golden and perfect and I’m absolutely not thinking about the eight-foot slime creature under my bed who apparently cannot stay still.
Gram hums.
The same hymn from before, something about grace and wandering.
Her foot taps in no particular rhythm.
“You know,” she says from her chair, eyes on her wool. “Whatever’s making your house creak, Maisie Louise, it soundscontent.”
She says it the way she says everything, like it’s just biblical truth.
I flip another pancake and pretend my face isn’t the color of a beet.
Gram goes back to her felting, humming her hymn, utterly satisfied with herself.
Over the next three days, Gram becomes a fixture in my house.
She arrives each morning with her canvas bag and her Bible, settling into her armchair like she’s claiming territory.
She felts while I work.
She asks about the business, the order, my sleep.
She makes herself useful in ways that feel like surveillance wrapped in love.
And by the third evening, when Gram finally gathers her things and heads home, I collapse onto the couch and stare at the ceiling.
