I Was Paid to Pretend to Be His Granddaughter — Then His Final Wish Shocked His Family
A wife named Loretta who could sing, and did, at every wedding in the county for forty years.
A daughter he’d raised alone after Loretta passed, “as best I could, which some days wasn’t very.”
A granddaughter who used to sit on this same porch and read him the sports page when his eyes started going, “before all of it.”
He never said what “all of it” was.
I never asked.
I’d been told not to.
Over time, we grew close.
I learned that he took his coffee with three sugars and pretended it was one.
I learned that he could tell what kind of car was passing by the sound, and was right nine times out of ten, and would sulk about the tenth.
I learned that when he said “Loretta would’ve liked you,” he meant it as the highest thing he had.
I learned things about my own family I hadn’t meant to say — about Jaylen’s treatments, about my mother’s two jobs, about the diner off Route 14 — because a blind man on a porch is the easiest person in the world to tell the truth to, and because he asked, every Sunday, “How’s that brother of yours?” and waited for the real answer.
“You’re carrying too much, baby girl,” he said once.
