I Was Paid to Pretend to Be His Granddaughter — Then His Final Wish Shocked His Family
Sometimes she’s at work and it’s just me and the chair and the green blanket and the street.
I don’t pretend to be anybody anymore.
I’m Nia.
I sit where I sat.
And I listen to the cars, and I’m right about the make about six times out of ten, and I’m working on it.
Jaylen comes sometimes.
He’s fourteen, and stronger than he was — the trust pays for the specialist my mother had been told we couldn’t afford, and the specialist, it turns out, was the difference — and he sits on the top step in the spot Kiara sat with the shoebox and asks me to tell him Mr. Booker stories.
“Tell me the one about the tenth car.”
“You’ve heard the one about the tenth car.”
“Tell me again. Do the sulk.”
I do the sulk.
My mother came once, in June, on her one Sunday off, and stood on the porch for a long time looking at the chair and the green blanket, and then she sat down in the chair — the only person besides Kiara and me who ever has — and folded her hands on the blanket and listened to the street.
“He asked about Jaylen every week?” she said.
