I stood on the porch and watched the red taillights vanish past the bend in the road.

Grandma came out through the front door, wrapped in a wool shawl I had fetched from her bedroom closet, and stood beside me at the porch railing with her arms crossed, watching the empty road where the car had been.

“He was seven years old when his father built this porch,” she said softly, her voice barely above the rustle of the leaves.

“He sat right on those steps with a little toy hammer, pretending he was helping nail down the floorboards.” And I understood that she was not, in that moment, triumphant, or even angry.