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“Yeah, I’m worried about his heart, but not that he needs more exercise,” he told me. “By the way, did you know that he was an athlete?” I got to hear about some of his high school exploits.

“Why are you worried about his heart?” I asked after I had expressed an appropriate level of appreciation for Oliver’s rowing team.

“Did you hear what I said about his piano?”

“Last night? Yes, I heard that you said he’d left it in California and you were mad about that.”

“Mad? No. I was pissed out of my damn mind. I wanted to drive out there and pack everything up myself, but he said, ‘No, Gramps. I just want to be away from her.’”

“Do people call pianos ‘her?’ Like boats?” I asked.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded. “I’m saying that he wanted to get away from his wife.”

“His…” I stopped, too surprised to talk anymore.

“His wife,” Mr. Marchand repeated, clearly annoyed. “His wife! He met her when he was in college and she was doing some internet thing. If you ask me, that’s the problem. It’s all cold. There’s no human connection there.” He talked for a while about why people should study other things, like music.

“His…” I forced out the rest. “His wife? He’s married?” I hadn’t noticed a ring, but plenty of my mom’s male friends had female partners that they hadn’t acknowledged with words or with symbols of commitment. They hadn’t behaved as if they were committed to them, either.

“Not anymore. He’s divorced,” Gramps told me. “I didn’t see it coming, although I knew that something was wrong.” He sighed. “He stopped talking to me for a while and then the next thing I heard, he was saying that it was over and he was coming home. He didn’t even want to be in the same state as that woman.”

“It was bitter?”

“He still won’t say too much. That’s the problem,” Mr. Marchand stated. “He was never a kid to go around and yell out his problems, but now he won’t talk about her at all. He’s just sad.”

“Oh. That’s too bad.”

“The running should help. Having a friend,” he said. In another surprising move, he smiled at me. When he did, he looked so much like his grandson—a man who rarely wore that expression himself.

“I wouldn’t mind having him as a friend,” I said. “I wouldn’t mind having anyone.”

“What the hell am I, chopped liver? Ingrate!” He swore a little, but he didn’t actually seem mad.

I learned a lot that day, and not only that I really shouldn’t use two feet to drive an automatic. I also had a lot more questions, and not just about what the number 1 on the gearshift meant. I went up to my apartment and did the dishes that I had left to pile up in the sink, thinking and humming along to the music. I wiped my eyes a few times due to steam from the water, but I wasn’t bothered by it.

It was pretty exciting to think of myself as a person who had a friend.

Chapter 5

I rubbed my eyes again because they must have been dry. I had just put in these contacts but the heaters were on now in my apartment and that was probably causing the problem that I’d been experiencing over the past few days with my vision. I blinked and then just decided to keep them closed as I rinsed off, shivering.

The water was warm. The air? No, it wasn’t. Another problem I was experiencing was that I couldn’t control the heat in my apartment. I had been pretty comfortable until about a week before, when I realized that I was rubbing my hands together and wearing my coat inside. I had looked all around for the thermostat, which I hadn’t needed to adjust before, but I hadn’t been able to find it.

I had sought out the building manager to ask where it was.

“Oh, didn’t I mention that to you?” Mrs. McGlothen had innocently asked. “There are no separate temperature controls in our old building. That’s part of its historic charm.”

“I’m freezing, not charmed,” I had answered.

She’d recommended thicker socks, an electric blanket, and better curtains. “This is what happens when the seasons change,” she had told me. “It’s only going to get worse. I thought you said that you had lived in Michigan before.”

Yes, but I had been in places where I could set the thermostat to seventy-eight and then feel nice and cozy. I had just ordered an electric blanket and a pair of fingerless gloves so I could type, but I had a feeling that it wasn’t going to be enough. It had been gloomy lately, with lots of storms that had brought inches of cold rain. It might have turned to snow soon.

“Good,” Mr. Marchand said when I mentioned that to him during our lesson later that day. “You need to learn to drive in poor conditions.”

“Or, I could wait inside to avoid that and have everything delivered instead.” I pushed his hand away from the knob for the heater. “No, I need it on high.”

“I feel like I’m in the Sahara,” he complained. “Make a right.”