I did not know how much until the week before he died.
By then, the hospital room had become its own weather.
Machines blinked.
The sheets smelled of bleach.
Frank’s hand felt too light in mine.
He asked me to bring him the old cigar box from the top shelf of his closet.
I had seen that box for years and never opened it.
I thought it held receipts, screws, or the kind of small things men save for reasons they never explain.
Inside were stacks of United States savings bonds, banded by year.
On the largest envelope, in Frank’s blocky pencil handwriting, he had written: For our first grandbaby.
I remember sitting down because my knees stopped trusting me.
Frank watched my face.
He told me he had started the year Kyle turned ten.
He had wanted to give the child a beginning that could not be taken away by a bad month, a proud parent, or a foolish purchase.
