The crooked smile I had known since 1972 did not appear. Instead, he rubbed his left wrist, his fingers tracing the leather strap of his watch.
“Are they asking about your health?” I asked.
“They are asking about the properties,” he said. His voice had a flat, dry cadence that I had never heard him use when we were teenagers. “Margaret wants to know if I have spoken to the county assessor about the tax valuations on the Oakridge mansion. She says she needs to plan for her own future.”
“She is your daughter, Garrett. It is natural to worry about the future.”
“It is not worry, Eleanor,” he said, looking out the window at the passing traffic on Main Street. “It is calculation. They talk as if I am already a set of keys they are waiting to inherit.”
He reached across the laminate table, his hand resting near mine. I smoothed the fabric of my skirt, feeling the familiar wool beneath my palms.
“I told them about us,” he said.
My hand went still on my lap. “What did they say?”
