That old man was never your family. You were just the grocery boy for twelve years.”
Evan Parker said those words outside the funeral home in the Brookside neighborhood, his phone in one hand and a cold little smile on his mouth, as though his uncle’s body were not still only a few steps away, resting inside a plain coffin covered with white flowers.
Caleb Morgan did not answer right away. He was forty years old, his black shirt wrinkled from the summer heat in Chicago, his eyes red from trying not to break down. He had not come to Mr. Henry’s funeral to fight with anyone. He had come to say goodbye to the man who, for twelve years, had waited for him every Sunday with hot coffee, sweet rolls, and an empty chair beside the window.
It had begun when Caleb was twenty-eight and had just moved onto that quiet street, thinking he would only stay for a couple of years. One Sunday morning, while taking out the trash, he saw Mr. Henry struggling to lift grocery bags from the trunk of an old sedan. One bag split open, tomatoes rolled across the sidewalk, and the old man tried to bend down with one hand pressed against his back.
