She Asked a Stranger to Pretend to Be Her Grandson

CHAPTER 2 - THE LANDLORD

The old woman swayed so hard I thought she might fall.

I caught her elbow before she did.

The man in the tan coat spotted us and smiled in a way that wasn't friendly. He was in his fifties, trim, clean-shaven, carrying a folder under one arm like paperwork made him powerful.

"There you are," he said. "And who is this?"

I felt the old woman's hand clutch my sleeve.

I answered before she could.

"I'm her grandson."

His eyes moved over my jacket, my tattoos, my motorcycle helmet on the booth seat. He clearly didn't like what he saw, but he adjusted fast.

"Funny," he said. "In twelve years of collecting rent, I've never met any family."

"Maybe you never asked," I said.

His mouth tightened. "Mrs. Alvarez is three months behind. The county inspector has also deemed the back stairs unsafe. The property may be condemned. I offered her a room elsewhere."

The old woman finally found her voice. "A room above the laundromat with no elevator."

"It is affordable."

"It is a cage," she whispered.

I looked at her then. Really looked. The careful lipstick. The pressed blouse. The walker with one tennis ball worn thinner than the other. This wasn't stubborn pride. This was fear of being removed from the last place in the world that still felt like hers.

The landlord opened the folder. "Unless a family member is prepared to take legal and financial responsibility-"

"I am," I said.

Mrs. Alvarez turned to me, stunned.

He gave a short laugh. "You don't even know what you're agreeing to."

Maybe he was right. I didn't know her. An hour ago, I hadn't known my mother had one living relative.

My mother never said the word mother unless she was drunk, angry, or both.

Before I could answer, Mrs. Alvarez reached into her purse again. This time she pulled out an envelope, old and yellowed.

"It came back unopened," she said to me, not the landlord. "I sent it twenty-six years ago. To Anna."

She handed it over with trembling fingers.

Across the front was my childhood address in Dayton.

I had lived there with my mother until I was six.

And on the back, in my mother's handwriting, were three words:

Return to sender. Deceased.