My hands felt stiff as I reached out and picked up my black cell phone from the wooden nightstand.

I flipped open the plastic cover, and the small screen lit up with green numbers in the dark room.

I scrolled past the numbers for the grocery pharmacy, the gas company, and three distant cousins in Kentucky I hadn’t called since my sister passed away five years ago.

Stored at the very bottom of the directory were three names I had kept saved for years, waiting for a day I hoped would never come.

The first was David, the former probate and elder law attorney I had taken in through his last two years of university, when his own family had left him with no tuition money.