Cal put his cell on the bedside table.

“Who was that on the phone?” Heidi leaned against the inside of the open door, her arms crossed.

“A friend.”

“A friend who makes you happy.”

Cal punched a cradle in the pillow for his head and said, “Yeah, she does.”

“Someone local?” Heidi asked.

“She lives in Ohio.”

Heidi waited a moment before saying, “Nurse Rachel was nice.”

“Yeah, she was.”

“She said she’d help us find help for Dad.”

“Yeah, she told me that, too,” Cal said. “She has a little home health gig on the side.” Nurse Rachel was nice, maybe a little nicer than she needed to be. Yeah, she had gone out of her way to be nice. “Did you pick up the turkey?”

“I did.”

“I’m so tired I can barely think.” A vice of muscle tension pressed on both sides of his forehead. He hoped he hadn’t picked up a virus in the hospital.

“I’m sorry,” Heidi said. “You rest. I’ll make sure Dad’s comfortable before I leave. We’ll eat at two tomorrow.”

“Will you call Rudy and invite him?” Cal asked. “He ate alone last year.”

“I can do that. Thanks for coming home, Cal.”

“See you tomorrow, Heidi.” He tugged the blanket around his shoulders as he turned to the wall.

“Goodnight, Cal,” Heidi said. “Sounds like Rachel will be able to help us out with Dad.” The door shut softly.

He and Rachel had a chance to talk while his father slept. Turned out she and Cal were the same age. She said she had worked at the hospital for over thirty years. She had grown children. Her husband had died of a heart attack a few years ago.

She seemed solid and kind. If he were looking to date someone in Cleveland, he might choose her.

A MOUTHFUL OF PIE CHART

On Thanksgiving Day, Bryony delivered her father and five pies to Mitch’s house. Knowing her family would prefer an assortment of traditional favorites, she chose sweet potato, pumpkin, walnut, and pecan, but added a savory surprise for the main meal.

Carol welcomed them into the house and took their coats while fawning over “Papa Green.” He grunted appreciation, his head down, not looking at his daughter-in-law as she led him into the living room to seat him on the couch. As his grandchildren, their spouses, and his great grandchildren arrived, Bryony’s father barely acknowledged them. Mitch’s arrival elicited only a slightly warmer greeting.

The younger generation filled the room with overlapping conversations and human heat. Bryony tried to keep up, and when she couldn’t, sat back and listened. Mitch asked his children, their spouses, and his grandchildren questions and used all of their short replies to reflect on his own experiences. Nobody tried to include Bryony or her father in the back and forth.

Finally, Carol called them to the table.

Making it all the way through the main meal without saying more than, “Yes, please,” and “No, thank you,” Bryony’s father managed to keep his delivery civil until Mitch commented on how nice it was to have the family together again.

At that point, her father looked up from his dessert plate and said, “I don’t see why Alma couldn’t come. There’s always enough food for a battalion, and an army could fit in your house.”

“We wanted it to be just family,” Mitch said.

“She’s family to me,” her father said and stuffed another bite of pie into his mouth.

“We’ll invite her next time, Papa Green,” Carol said. She turned to Bryony, speaking louder than necessary. “Mitch tells me you’re thinking of starting a pie business, Bryony.”

Bryony’s fork halted an inch from her mouth, and she laid the bite back down on her plate. Her sister-in-law’s record for perfect timing remained unbeatable. “I’m in the dreaming stage at this point.”

“You always were a dreamer.” Her father wiped his mouth on a cloth napkin. “Always with your head in the clouds. That’s why you’ll always be an old maid. No man wants a woman who doesn’t put dinner on the table every night.”

In 1955, in your dreams, Bryony thought. She and her father had been getting along so well, but back in the dynamic of their family of origin, he reverted to his old surly self.

“He’s only telling it like it is,” Mitch said. “Starting a business at this stage of the game is beyond ridiculous. Do you know how many fail in the first year? Twenty percent. Those are not good odds, Bry. You’d do better to go back to working full time until you can’t anymore. I do not want to rescue you from financial collapse. I am not made of money.”

The other adults around the table had gone silent.

Unwilling to further ruin their holiday meal, Bryony thanked her brother for his concern and said she would take his advice into consideration. The tactic seemed to work as he turned his focus to asking for another piece of pie, “with more whipped cream this time,” and then lamented about how much he had already eaten and how horrible he would feel in the morning.

Enduring until the end of the meal, Bryony offered to help clear the table, but the younger adults insisted on cleaning up. Carol escorted her father-in-law into the family room. Mitch announced his plan to retire to his recliner in front of the football game, but before he left the table, Bryony asked if he could give their father a ride back to the Assisted Living. When Mitch started to complain, his daughter stepped up and offered a ride for her grandfather. Relieved of duty, Mitch started to head for the recliner. Bryony cut him off at the doorway to the family room.

“Mitch, can I talk to you for a minute?”

He sighed deeply before escorting her to his home office—a small room off the front hallway—and, once inside, stood with his arms folded across his chest. “What is it, Bryony?”

“I want you to look at something.” She pulled an envelope out of her purse. “Not that it’s any of your business, but it seems like you need to have this information.”

“What’s this?” He extracted the documents and unfolded them. “Is Dad getting kicked out of that place? All the more reason for you to move in with him….” His voice trailed off as he scanned the first sheet of paper. “What is this?”

“That’s a spreadsheet of my assets and liabilities.” She hadn’t intended to show her spreadsheet to Mitch, but she had it in her purse because she met with her financial advisor a few weeks ago and had yet to refile it. Given her brother’s incessant insistence that she would end up poor, or that he would end up having to support her, showing him evidence to the contrary just made sense. “If you want, you can turn to the next-to-the-last page to review the totals of all of my accounts. The last page is just a colored pie chart of where my assets are located.”

Her brother did as she instructed and—following a word that might have resulted in a high school expulsion—blurted out, “Is this for real? How did this happen?”

“I’ve been investing money since I was eighteen,” she answered. “I own my house and car, and have budgeted for needed repairs. Even if the stock market plummets, I’ll be in good shape because my financial holdings are dispersed over a wide range of risk tolerance.”

“You have more money than I do!” Mitch exclaimed.

“You had more people to spend your money on,” Bryony said to soften the blow.

She took the papers from his hands and slid them back into the envelope.

“You could lose all of what it would take to start a business and still have enough money to fund a long, comfortable retirement,” Mitch said, still sounding incredulous. He sank into his desk chair. “You really don’t need me to take care of you.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you, Mitch. I haven’t needed anybody to take care of me for a very long time.”