4
Jessica glanced around the room which was orderly and curtained, with a comforter over the bed, and her maternal grandma rocking in a chair doing cross stitch.
"Did you get the catalogue?"
Jessica jumped, "Yes - yes."
Her grandma snipped the thread, and looped another through the eye of a needle.
"You should've started from the ones I sent you, back when you were a girl. It teaches you patience. And you could be selling them by now, on that - what's it called - esty."
Jessica stared at her feet to hold in a smile, and glanced up.
"There was a lot going on back then. I thought there was time for everything else. He still does, by the way he goes on."
"Do you visit him?"
Jessica shook her head while her grandma rocked in the chair.
"Mm-hmm. He doesn't visit me, either."
Jessica watched through the window as an elderly man point to a flowerbed with his cane, gesturing to the orderly who gave a stock-standard response.
"It's all those cameras," her grandma blurted, "I catch the orderlies tap-tap-tapping away on their picture phones. Back in my day, we were lucky if our pen pal wrote back at all."
Her grandma stopped rocking.
"You seen your folks lately?"
Jessica shook her head, and bobbed her leg over her knee.
"It's not that easy."
Her grandma tutted, and glanced to the clock on the wall which was slow, and Jessica resisted the impulse to check her phone.
"I know you've got things to do," her grandma shooed, "Give my love to - to Tom."
Jessica said her goodbyes, and promised to order a cross stitch pattern. She drove to the florist, fingering the price tag and drove out to the cemetery. There was a man in the row she walked along.
"Someone special, luv?"
"My grandma."
He gave her some pocket tissues, and she laid the flowers down on the grave. She moved to another row, and stared long and hard at another grave. The headstones dotting the green spread out far and wide.
She got into her car, taking a detour along a road where flowers were perched along a guard rail. She was dry-eyed and peaceful when she arrived home.
Jessica tripped on the cable charging the the PS4 controller, and hands shaking, saw the bedroom door closed and forced herself to slowly knock.
" - you're home early," came Tim's harried reply, "You can join me if you're quick - "
Jessica turned and headed into the kitchen, and pressed the blinking voicemail.
"Hey hon, it's just me… it's been a while - "
She glanced at the calendar on the wall, and at the cookbook under the coffee table.