Some mornings I still turned my head to tell him something before remembering there was no one in his chair.
He had not been a fancy man.
He drove the same truck for nineteen years and treated every strange noise like a personal negotiation.
He saved rubber bands around soup cans and coupons in a kitchen drawer.
He mended the storm door twice before admitting it needed replacing.
He could walk through a room and notice the loose screw, the uneven table leg, the curtain rod sagging on one side.
Then he would fix it quietly, as if leaving things better was just how a person paid rent on the earth.
He loved Kyle with the same steady patience.
And before there was even a grandchild to love, Frank had begun saving for one.
He never called it a fund.
He called it “planting.”
A little here.
A little there.
Savings bonds bought from bonuses, overtime, birthday money he never spent on himself, and good months at work when the furnace did not break and the truck did not need tires.
I did not know how much until the week before he died.
By then, the hospital room had become its own weather.
Machines blinked.
The sheets smelled of bleach.
Frank’s hand felt too light in mine.
