There were too many places to sit. That’s what Dorothy thought when they’d moved into the house in 1964, trading in what Lester had called their “starter home” for something bigger and grander. What had they thought they were starting? A family, a full life ahead of them.

And they had, certainly. It was the next move, the move to the bigger house, where things had gone awry. The first house had been plenty big enough for Dorothy and Les and little Paulie. But more children hadn’t followed, and the big house had remained just that. It swallowed them and eventually spit the other two out. But not Dorothy.

At eighty-nine, she’d lived in the house for almost sixty years, the last ten on her own. And there were still too many places to sit. She moved from room to room, the long days stretched out before her. Like most of the old people she knew–the ones that hadn’t kicked off yet–Dorothy didn’t sleep much. In the early morning, she made herself a cup of strong Earl Grey tea and a plate of buttered white toast, and she sat at the kitchen table on the hard kitchen chair until her tailbone ached, reading the news on the iPad that Paul had given her several Christmases back. “You can’t go down the front steps when it’s icy to collect your newspaper,” he’d said. Dorothy didn’t believe her son was worried about her slipping so much as that he didn’t like the newspapers piling up in the house. Last time he’d cleared a mound of New York Posts that had accumulated in the corner of Dorothy’s bedroom, he’d found a decomposing mouse underneath. Dorothy had chuckled at the look of horror on Paul’s face.

Later in the afternoon, Dorothy would move to the lumpy, living room couch, the fabric, a stain resistant workaday cotton now worn soft as fine silk, soothing to the touch. In the evening, she’d perch on the unstable ottoman in the den and watch an hour of TV marveling at the difference between the contestants on Jeopardy and those on Wheel of Fortune. At 8:00, the sitting was over for another day, and she lay down in the king-size bed, yearning for sleep.

  Each Wednesday, Dorothy would do an inventory of the physical state of her home. Truth be told, it was falling apart, and when she made the rounds, she noticed all the things, big and small, that needed repair. The stain on the dining room ceiling where the toilet had leaked a few months earlier in the bathroom above, mold now creeping down the walls. The broken ventilation system over the range that ensured that whenever Dorothy fried anything, from a humble egg to a hamburger, the smoke was so thick that the alarm sounded, and the fire department raced to her rescue. The air conditioning and heating systems, both now so defunct that the house was neither sufficiently warm in the winter nor pleasantly cool in the summer, but settled at somewhere around clammy, year-round. Dorothy wasn’t fussed about the decay around her; it seemed to correlate with the inevitable demise of her own body. It was natural. Why fight it? But with Paul calling every week–attention he hadn’t paid to her in ages–to tell her that she’d no business living there alone, she began to doubt herself.

At the thought of Paul and his niggling, the indignation in Dorothy’s chest began to percolate. What right did her son have to tell her how to live out her final years? He was no youngster anymore, fifty-four on his last birthday, and living in Taos like a washed-up hippie, hardly a dime to his name. He’d never made much of himself despite all she’d put into him, his marriage a shambles, no children, his career as a high school drama teacher mostly a bust.

 Dorothy felt the heat rising to her face and opened the front door to get some fresh air. It was a warm day for mid-November, and she made her way slowly out onto the porch, reaching the rocking chair. When she and Les had bought the house, there was no porch, just a narrow colonnade supporting a covered walkway facing the street. At first, Dorothy had opposed the renovation. At the time, she’d had troubling visions of herself as an old woman, rocking in a chair, watching the neighbors stroll by. But the porch had been a wonderful addition, the center of the family’s social life, iced tea and lemon squares for the mothers of Paulie’s little friends, and later, they’d been grateful that Paul and his college friends drank beer on the porch early in the evening, sitting on the steps and listening to music for hours before they went home. All of this came flooding back to Dorothy as she sat, now the old woman she had envisioned. It wasn’t what she’d feared. Except that Les hadn’t become the old man she’d pictured in the rocking chair beside her.

Out of the corner of her eye, Dorothy spotted her neighbor Valerie, her pink sweater drawn tight against perky breasts, arms outstretched and her latest offering in her hands.

Valerie bounded up the porch steps, her voice as chipper as the sparrows singing in the beech trees in front of the house. She smiled so widely Dorothy thought her lips might crack. “Hello, Dot!”

“Hello, Val.”

Valerie’s smile turned into a frown. “Oh, no one calls me Val. It’s Valerie.”

Dorothy inhaled deeply and let out the breath slowly, a slight whistling sound escaping her lips. “Yes, I know that. And no one calls me Dot. Or Dotty. You know that too.”

Valerie stood awkwardly for a moment but seemed to regain her purpose from the aluminum foil covered dish she was holding. “Should I put this straight into the refrigerator? I’ve already let it cool.”

“You know you don’t need to keep bringing food. No one has died. Not in a very long time.” Not that the outpouring had been overwhelming when Les had passed, but it had been enough. Besides, that had been long before Valerie moved in next door. Dorothy hadn’t needed anyone’s charity then.

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Valerie said, moving toward the front door. “It’s my pleasure. I brought you a chicken and cheese enchilada casserole.”

Dorothy wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She opened her mouth to say she preferred Valerie’s lasagna but remembered her manners at the last moment. She wasn’t incapable of cooking for herself. It was just so much easier when someone did it for her. She watched as the younger woman went into the house and braced herself for Valerie’s reaction, always the same, when she saw the mostly empty fridge.

A moment later, Valerie let the screen door slam behind her and stood in front of Dorothy. “I’d be more than happy to take you to the supermarket, or to pick up whatever you need.” She sat down in the empty chair next to Dorothy without an invitation.

“I’m doing fine. I haven’t starved yet.”

They sat, Valerie rocking and Dorothy with her feet planted firmly in front of her, not saying a word, for what seemed to Dorothy like a long time but probably wasn’t. Eventually, a car pulled up in front of the house across the street, and a petite woman emerged wearing a navy tracksuit and holding a “for sale” sign. Dorothy, whose vision wasn’t what it used to be, leaned forward. Could she be the same woman Paul had brought to the house a couple of months earlier?

***

It had been a hot afternoon, and the air conditioning was particularly obstinate that day, the heat rising to the second floor in an unrelenting assault. At about three, Dorothy had gone upstairs to her bedroom for her usual twenty-minute power nap. She never felt refreshed afterwards, and certainly not empowered, but the man on public radio had been so emphatic about the health benefits of a short rest. Dorothy lay a cool wet cloth on her forehead and closed her eyes. When she heard sounds coming from downstairs, at first, she thought she was dreaming. When her alarm went off and the noise continued, she was quite sure she was awake. Dorothy figured the sounds were Valerie putting food in the fridge. She’d given her a key “in case of an emergency.” Apparently, Valerie believed that the possibility of ice cream melting justified barging into Dorothy’s house.

Dorothy came down the stairs in as much of a huff as she could muster, ready to confront Valerie, only to find Paul sitting on her living room couch. When he saw her, he jumped up.

“Mom! I didn’t realize you were here.”

“I live here. You, on the other hand, appear only now and again.” Dorothy’s legs felt shaky, and she sank onto the ottoman.

Paul returned to the couch, his hands folded in his lap, turning to look over his shoulder. “Can’t a son visit his mother on the spur of the moment?”

Dorothy looked him up and down as she tried to come up with a snappy retort.  He appeared slightly less unkempt than the last time she’d seen him. His clothes matched, and his shoes, though scuffed, were presentable. His hair was combed, and his beard was neat and trimmed. Paul looked like someone trying to make a good impression, and Dorothy wondered on whom. Maybe he’d gotten a new job and had some extra cash in his pocket, or maybe he’d met someone. She was about to ask him when a petite woman rapidly typing on her cell phone came out of the den into the kitchen.

“Look, it needs work, but the bones are there–” The woman looked up and stopped talking, her mouth pinched shut.

Paul stood and placed his arm lightly and unconvincingly around the woman’s shoulders. “Mom. This is Diane. She’s a friend. From the neighborhood.”

Dorothy knew Paul was lying. He didn’t have any friends from the neighborhood anymore, hadn’t in years. “Why is she walking around my house?” Dorothy stood up and took a step toward the woman. “Cat got your tongue, honey?”

“You don’t need to answer that,” Paul said, practically sweeping the woman out the front door. “I’ll be in touch.”

Dorothy and Paul sat facing each other in the living room for the better part of an hour, barely a word passing between them. When Valerie rang the bell at 5:00 to drop off a tray of baked ziti, Paul answered the door, nodded curtly at her, and left the house.

***

Valerie gestured toward the woman who was now knocking the sign into the flower bed in front of the house across the street. “Oh, wow. Did you know Mr. Bowden was moving?”

“No.”

“Well, you must know him. He’s been your neighbor forever.”

“Yes,” Dorothy said. “His daughter Genevieve is a little younger than Paul. He had a thing for her when they were in their twenties, but she wouldn’t give him a tumble. She was kind of a snob.”

“I wonder where he’s going,” Valerie said, sitting back in her chair, resuming her rocking as though she had nowhere else she needed to be.

“Maybe to be near Genevieve. Last I heard she and her family were out in Seattle.”

 Valerie reached over and patted Dorothy’s hand. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Dorothy pulled her hand out from under Valerie’s and wiped it on her jacket.

“I don’t know. I mean, I guess you don’t want to move out to New Mexico to be near Paul?”

Dorothy thought to let the comment pass. But too-kind Valerie, with her casseroles and chitchat and that husband who shoveled Dorothy’s path when it snowed without asking permission and her well-groomed children, irritated her.

“I think the distance between New Mexico and New York just about suits us both. You’re too young to understand.” Dorothy stood up and took a few steps toward the front door but stopped when Valerie reached out and lightly held her arm.

“Wait, there’s someone parking in your driveway. Maybe a delivery or something?”

“I haven’t ordered anything.” But sure enough, a young man wearing jeans and one of those ridiculous puffy jackets was making his way toward the porch. When he reached Dorothy, he pulled a plain brown envelope out of his backpack and looked down at it.

“Are you Dorothy Newcomb?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, great. You’re served,” the young man said, smiling widely. “This is my first day on the job. I’m so stoked to say that. You’re served. There, I said it again.” He handed her the envelope and turned to go.

Valerie rolled her eyes. “I think you have a future in this,” she yelled to his back.

Dorothy took the papers out of the envelope and glanced at the front page. “What is this?” She noticed her name and Paul’s but couldn’t decipher the rest. She handed the papers to Valerie and sat back down in her rocker. She felt a headache coming on, a dull throbbing behind her eyes.

Valerie was quiet for a few moments, turning the pages slowly. “Okay. I’m no lawyer, but from what I can gather, Paul has petitioned the court to be assigned as your legal guardian. Look, here—” Valerie pointed to the caption at the top of the first page, “–he claims you’re ‘incapacitated.’”

Dorothy closed her eyes and rocked.

Later, alone, Dorothy read the papers several times before getting into bed. The forms had required Paul to list, in some detail, the reasons why she was an “AIP,” an allegedly incapacitated person, who needed him as her legal guardian.

Oh! The things Paul had said to these strangers! Dorothy didn’t attend to her hygiene sufficiently, didn’t stock enough groceries and eat healthful meals on a regular basis, didn’t maintain the electrical and plumbing systems, resulting in unsafe conditions in the home. In one paragraph, Paul wrote that Dorothy didn’t take her prescribed medications for high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and Hashimoto’s disease. Did he think she had a death wish? She took all those pills religiously with her morning tea. The medication she skipped was the one Paul didn’t know about–the Zoloft that Dr. Lambert had prescribed, which made her skin crawl and did nothing for the bouts of melancholy that seemed to spring out of nowhere on a semi-regular basis.

Honestly, what disturbed Dorothy wasn’t the litany of her failings–what eighty-nine-year-old didn’t eat chocolate pudding for dinner sometimes, skip a day or two of showering to preserve what little healthy oils still lubricated her parched skin, or let the laundry pile up because she couldn’t change the light bulbs in the basement? No, it wasn’t the what of Paul’s betrayal that baffled her, it was the why. Why did her son want to be her guardian? What did he get out of it? He needed money, of course, he always did. Despite his shaggy hair and thrift-store sports jackets, he enjoyed a good red wine, the occasional Swedish massage, and a new, elegant wristwatch every year or two. Dorothy couldn’t imagine he’d take the trouble of becoming her guardian to steal what little she had, especially when it wouldn’t be long until he’d inherit it anyway. Maybe he wanted to assert control over her, but Dorothy couldn’t see that either. Paul lived his own life, always had, even as a little boy, and he respected that she was an independent person. He’d never cared how Dorothy spent her time or who she spent it with. Was he really looking to manage her day-to-day existence now? It made no sense.

After a sleepless night, when she had gauged that the sun was strong enough to have warmed up the front porch, Dorothy stuck her head out and checked to see if Valerie was lurking. Not that she expected to see her. Dorothy had lost her temper when those legal papers arrived and yelled at Valerie, ordering her off the property. With a pang of anticipated hunger, Dorothy wondered if she’d seen the last of the casseroles.

As she sat in her rocker, Dorothy pondered her next steps. The judge had set a hearing date in three weeks’ time, where Paul would have to offer testimony and evidence in support of his application. In the interim, a court evaluator would visit with Dorothy to investigate Paul’s claims and would submit a written report. The humiliation of some nosey social worker poking around her home was almost too much to bear.

Of course, the logical thing would be to contact Paul, and Dorothy picked up the phone two or three times to do just that but lost her nerve. Maybe Paul knew something Dorothy didn’t. Maybe she was incapacitated. Maybe she was beyond incapacitated, had one foot in the grave as her mother used to say. She felt a chill and wrapped her coat around her, noticing for the first time a boy climbing a ladder across the street at Perry Bowden’s.

Dorothy thought he was a teenager, twenty at most, but as he reached up to disconnect each of the outdoor light fixtures from around the front of Bowden’s house, his compact body bespoke a strength and self-assuredness that reminded Dorothy of her own husband when they first met. Unlike pale, sandy-haired Lester, this young man had blue-black locks, straight and long, and although the day was brisk, he wore short sleeves, revealing forearms the color of her morning toast. Dorothy watched as he methodically disconnected the lanterns and lowered them gently to the ground, checking the lightbulbs and changing some, and inspected the wires. He was quiet and unrushed, cleaning the glass with a spray and cloth, and polishing the brass before returning each to its place. When he finished, he went inside and must have flipped a switch, the lights springing alive, a preemptive strike on the impending darkness of the late afternoon. When he emerged from the house, he didn’t smile or show any satisfaction in his handiwork but merely put away the ladder, retrieved a roller and drop clothes from a truck parked in the driveway, and began to paint the fence that enclosed the backyard. He worked economically, with no wasted motion or sound, as though he could go on painting forever.

After half an hour, Dorothy tore herself away and called Bowden.

“Who’s that young man doing work on your house?”

Bowden sighed on the other end of the phone. “How’re you doing, Dorothy? Everything going okay over there?”

Dorothy frowned. Bowden had never been the same since his wife ran off with her Weight Watchers coach. Now he had to be treated with kid gloves; a phone call required introductory niceties. “I’m sorry, Perry. Yes, all’s fine here. I see you put your house up for sale and you’re spiffing it up. Looks great. What’s the young man’s name, and where did you find him?”

“Are you moving too, Dorothy?”

“No. I’m planning to stay put. I need to fix some things, so Paul doesn’t convince the authorities that I’m in danger of starving or freezing to death.” It pained Dorothy to tell Bowden this, but it seemed to be the price she had to pay to get the information she needed. And the more she thought about the calm, steady way the young man went about his tasks, the more she was convinced he could salvage the situation.

Dorothy heard Bowden clear his throat. “Ah. I see. Actually, the real estate broker brought him over. And he’s still got some work to do here before I can let you have him.”

Dorothy recoiled at the way Bowden referred to the handyman like a rake or a shovel that you might pass around between neighbors. “But who is he? What’s his name? Where’s he from? Is he legal?”

“I didn’t adopt him, Dorothy. He’s just fixing some things. His name is Carlos. He speaks Spanish but understands some English. And I didn’t ask the broker all these questions like you’re asking me. I’m pretty sure she found him on Main Street–you know, near the diner where the guys hang around looking for work. I don’t know where he’s from.”

Dorothy knew who Bowden was talking about. The day laborers, mostly from Mexico, had been gathering in that spot for years, waiting early in the morning in all sorts of weather to be recruited by passing cars offering work on different projects for cheap wages. Les always said it was a crying shame, and that the practice would die out if people didn’t pick people up but helped them get regular jobs. Dorothy didn’t disagree. But she needed this young man’s help.

She engaged in a bit more chitchat with Bowden, inquiring after Genevieve and the grandkids, noting inanely that she thought there’d be plenty of good coffee in Seattle. “Please tell Carlos that I have work to keep him busy for a week, and I’ll pay him whatever you’re paying him.” Dorothy hoped Bowden had not been stingy with the young man’s wages; she figured she could always add a generous tip if need be.

“Sure, sure, Dorothy,” Bowden said. “And I hope you get to stay, if that’s what you want. Me, I can’t wait to get out of here. Old people don’t belong by themselves.”

Dorothy considered whether Bowden could be right. Then she remembered that while he might be an authority on heartbreak, that didn’t mean he knew anything about life in general, or her life in particular.

Later, with the lights out and wrapped in her down comforter, a glass of water on the bedside table and her eyeglasses safely tucked in their case, Bowden’s reference to the real estate broker came back to Dorothy. She was now 100% sure the petite woman selling Bowden’s property was the same person who Paul had let wander around her house on that hot August day. Was it really possible that Paul was planning to be appointed as Dorothy’s guardian so he could sell her home out from under her?

The wind slapped at Dorothy’s bedroom windows, waking her from a fitful sleep. She sat up slowly and waited a few seconds before she got out of bed to keep the dizziness at bay. Time had crawled since she spoke with Bowden about Carlos. In another week, the court evaluator would arrive and there was no way any social worker worth her salt would determine that Dorothy didn’t need help with the house in the sorry state it was in. Now that winter had made an early appearance, the nonworking heating system would be the kicker. Besides, she wasn’t in the market for a major renovation; she just needed a level of basic functioning that would prove she could take care of herself, and she had put all her eggs in this young man’s basket. Dorothy knew there were other handymen she could hire, including licensed ones. But Bowden had assured her that Carlos had “golden hands” and was as good with a paintbrush as with a pipe wrench and a wire stripper.

On Monday, when there was a knock at the front door, Dorothy didn’t have far to go to answer. She’d moved a folding chair to the foyer so she could look out toward Bowden’s house, the blustery cold having made it impossible to sit on the porch. That same cold spell had driven the young man inside to work, but she saw him go in and out; occasionally he passed the large bay window. Now, when the time had finally come to let him into the house, her palms were so sweaty she had trouble gripping the doorknob.

“One moment,” Dorothy called out in a panic, walking as quickly as she could into the kitchen where she grabbed a dish towel to wipe her hand and then the doorknob. By the time she got the door open, the young man had taken several steps toward the driveway and his truck.

“Wait! Please!” Carlos retraced his steps and stood quietly on the porch with his head bowed. Dorothy opened the screen door wide and motioned for him to come in. “Please, this way,” she said.

Carlos followed her through the living room, into the dining room, and stopped next to Dorothy in the kitchen, where he stood and seemed to dispassionately appraise the state of disrepair. His expression said, “Where do I start?”

“Do you speak any English at all?” Dorothy asked.

“No mucho. I understand a little.”

Dorothy wrapped her arms around herself and made teeth-chattering sounds to demonstrate the lack of heat, although as the thermostat registered sixty-two degrees, the house was cold in any language. She took a few steps toward the basement to show Carlos the boiler, but when she turned back to him, his eyes had gone to the window over the kitchen sink. She watched as he walked over and felt for the frigid air coming in through the jagged crack in the glass. He unclipped a measuring tape from a bulky tool belt around his slender waist and took the dimensions of the window. Then he pulled out his cell and spoke in rapid Spanish. When he finished, Carlos motioned for her to take him to the boiler downstairs. Dorothy took a tentative step into the dark. Carlos gently caught her by the elbow and brought her back to the kitchen, patting a kitchen chair. “Por favor,” he said.

After he’d replaced the lightbulbs from a box he brought in from his truck, he went downstairs to work on the boiler. An hour later, the house was beginning to warm up. Dorothy hadn’t moved from her perch on the kitchen chair.

Carlos’s English was limited and quirky. When they couldn’t understand each other, Dorothy resorted to Google translate on her iPad, grateful to learn that the splotchy gray marks on the walls were not mold, just mildew that washed away with warm soapy water and elbow grease.

Over the next seven or eight hours, Dorothy allowed Carlos to determine which projects to address and in what order based on some unstated criteria and with minimal consultation. Several times she intervened, pointing him to something broken or deteriorating that he hadn’t seen. But for the most part, she yielded to Carlos’s judgment, as if he were not a handyman she’d hired, but rather someone sent from above to put right what she had let fall apart.

At the end of the first day, Carlos packed up his tools. “Mañana?” he said. “Mañana,” she answered.

When he was gone, Dorothy realized she hadn’t eaten anything since her morning toast. She opened the fridge and pulled out Valerie’s enchilada casserole, cutting a small piece and popping it in the microwave. But the combination of the bubbling cheddar cheese and the shredded chicken made her queasy, and she could only manage a few bites. Dorothy knew it made no sense, but the longing she felt when Carlos left for the night reminded her of how she felt when Paulie had left home for college. As if the life had gone out of the house. “Foolish old woman,” she said aloud to the emptiness. Dorothy put away the casserole and crawled into bed.

The next day, Dorothy put Carlos to work on the ventilation unit in the kitchen. It wasn’t an easy fix, but eventually, he had it working. The kitchen would no longer fill up with smoke when Dorothy cooked, although she’d miss the arrival of the firemen in their bulky uniforms and gear. While Carlos turned to the leaky toilet upstairs, Dorothy called Valerie.

“I’m pretty busy today,” Valerie said, apparently still smarting from Dorothy’s misdirected tirade when the process server had handed over the guardianship papers.  Dorothy mumbled an apology and asked if Valerie would pick up some groceries for her.

“Are you having company?” Valerie asked.

“I suppose I am.”

In the evening, after Valerie had come and gone, Dorothy cranked up the range and the newly functioning ventilation system. The smell of bacon frying and hash browns crisping must have risen to the second floor where Carlos had been priming and painting Dorothy’s bathroom.

“Huele rico,” he said, standing to the side with a smile while Dorothy cracked four eggs into another pan, watching them sizzle and then flipping them over easy before sprinkling them with salt and pepper.

Dorothy shook her head. “I don’t know what that means, but I Googled this one–’desayuno para la cena’–breakfast for dinner. Paul’s favorite.”

Dorothy gestured toward the kitchen table where she’d set two places. She divided up the food, two thirds for Carlos and a third for herself.

Carlos stood behind the chair, unmoving. “For me?”

“Yes! For you. And for me.” Dorothy sat down and motioned for him to join her. She was suddenly ravenous. They ate noisily but without conversation, slurps and crunches and small sighs substituting for words, Carlos refilling their coffee cups from the pot on the counter, Dorothy wishing she’d thought to ask Valerie to buy dessert.

On the third day, a Wednesday, with much work still left to be done, Carlos didn’t arrive at his usual 9:00. At first Dorothy took this in stride, thinking perhaps he had gone to pick up something at the hardware store that he needed for a repair. When 10:00 came and went, she opened the front door and paced the foyer, looking out for his white truck and checking her watch. At 10:30, she forced herself to sit in front of the TV in the den and watch The Price Is Right, a show she’d never understood the appeal of–what was the value of knowing off the top of your head the price of a dishwasher? At 11:00, she called her neighbor across the street.

Bowden answered on the first ring, and Dorothy asked if he knew where Carlos was.

“Hah! Isn’t he working at your house? Did you lose him?” Perry sounded so amused that Dorothy could have marched over there and strangled him.

“I didn’t lose him, Perry. It’s just that he hasn’t shown up today.”

“Well, maybe he got rounded up. You know, deported. That’s the risk you take, I suppose.”

Dorothy was grateful Bowden couldn’t see her eyes well up with tears. Maybe she was losing it, just like Paul said, getting so worked up over a stranger she’d known for a couple of days. She walked through the living room, planted herself in her folding chair in front of the door, and once again heard her mother’s voice in her head about that damn watched pot.

An hour later, when Carlos came into view, rounding the corner on foot, Dorothy had to sit on her hands to keep herself from clapping.

Her joy was short-lived, however. Carlos looked exhausted, bareheaded in the frigid cold, his hair hanging limply in his face. With some difficulty, Dorothy understood that his truck had broken down and he’d walked to her house, what she figured must have been a distance of nearly seven or eight miles. She pieced together that Carlos had lost not only his ability to get to work but, for as long as the truck was being repaired, also the place where he slept.

“You’ll stay here, in Paul’s room,” Dorothy said, “until your truck is fixed.” She realized the futility of the gesture as soon as the words escaped her mouth. She had offered him a safe haven, a warm bed for a few days. And then what? Then go back to his truck, in winter, to sleep alone on the street? Where, where was Les when she needed him? Her husband would know what to do. But she’d made the offer, and she couldn’t, wouldn’t take it back.

Dorothy pointed, then led Carlos to the bedroom on the first floor. It had started out as a guest room, but they’d rarely had sleepover company, and Paul had taken it over when he was a teenager. Dorothy had cleared out most of his stuff, taken down the Van Halen and Tom Petty posters, given away the books he’d left behind, and thrown away the Star Trek memorabilia, just one plastic model of the Starship Enterprise remaining on a shelf Dorothy couldn’t reach.

“Please,” she said, miming laying her head on the pillow with her eyes closed. Dorothy saw the color rise to the young man’s cheeks, and he shook his head. “Por favor,” she said, more firmly. After a moment, Carlos nodded once, and she felt they’d come to an understanding. Dorothy walked across her son’s former bedroom and opened the closet where a few of Paul’s old clothes still hung, things he hadn’t fit into in years. She pulled some pants and sweaters off the hangers and lay them on the bed. Then she left Carlos in the room, standing stiffly, his head down and his hands thrust into the front pockets of his jeans.

For the rest of the week, Carlos fixed the dripping faucets that had nearly driven Dorothy crazy, replaced the garbage disposal which hadn’t disposed of anything in years, cleared out the gutters, reset the snap traps in the basement, replaced electrical outlets in the kitchen, and installed a new ceiling fan in the den.

In the evenings, Dorothy made dinner for two, old family favorites of Les and Paul’s, meatloaf and fried chicken, her own appetite restored by sharing the meals. They sat quietly together, Carlos seemingly enjoying his food, and Dorothy trying to ignore the strange pairing of an old lady sporting socks and slippers, who hadn’t been out of the house past her front porch in months, eating dinner with a young man from Mexico who spoke very little English and had nowhere to call home.

Carlos filled her glass with water at the start of the meal and refilled it later on. He handed her the bowl of potatoes without taking for himself first, the handle of the spoon facing toward her.

On Friday, over meatballs and spaghetti, with Google translate on the iPad at hand, Dorothy asked Carlos about where he grew up and his family. “Grande?” she read aloud from the iPad.

“Si.” Carlos smiled, telling her about his parents, his Abuela Flor, and his siete brothers and sisters. “I’m Tio Carlos,” he said, teaching Dorothy the word for uncle. Dorothy felt a pit in her stomach at the thought of the young man leaving his large family. She typed into the iPad, “Y viene aqui sola?”

“Si. Alone,” he said.

“Are you afraid?” Dorothy reached for the iPad to translate the question, but Carlos nodded and said he understood.

After Carlos finished the last of his meatballs, he pushed his chair back from the table and began to clear the dishes, scraping the pasta and sauce into the trash and loading the plates into the dishwasher. When he spoke again, his voice was strong and confident. “Yo soy joven–young–y soy bueno con mis manos,” he said, holding his hands in front of him. “No tengo miedo. I’m not afraid. Tengo esperanza.”

Esperanza. Dorothy typed the word. Hope. The word floated in the air between them. Carlos, who had so little in terms of material possessions and who was so profoundly on his own, nevertheless had hope. So much about this young man–his ability to fix things, his hearty appetite, the way he went to sleep early and woke up early, making up his bed and doing a load of towels in the washing machine–had given Dorothy hope.

And what, she wondered, about her own son? Did he have hope?

As if reading her mind, Carlos returned to the table with a package of cookies he found in the cupboard and asked a string of questions about Paul, typing them quickly onto the iPad. “Donde vive el? Tiene hijos? Visita?” Where does he live? Does he have children? Does he visit?

The answers stuck in Dorothy’s throat, and all she could do was shake her head.

By the end of the week, Dorothy couldn’t identify anything else Carlos could repair. It wasn’t that the house was perfect–far from it–but everything he could fix had been addressed. She paid him as generously as she could afford, upping Bowden’s wage considerably. When the garage called to say his truck was ready to be picked up, Dorothy pushed the image of Carlos sleeping in it out of her mind. She understood without his saying so that the most his pride would allow for was one last night’s refuge in her home.

“Good night. I’ll miss you,” Dorothy murmured, standing outside the closed door to Paul’s room after Carlos had gone to sleep.

The next morning, Dorothy stayed in bed long past her usual hour, waiting to hear Carlos leave. When he was gone, she came downstairs and stood in Paul’s bedroom, absorbing the void that had been dispelled for a short while. After a few moments, she noticed the note on the pillow.

“No soy yo quien te falta. Gracias por todo.”

Dorothy found the iPad on the kitchen table where they’d left it after dinner and carefully typed in the words.

“I’m not the one you are missing.”

The morning the hearing was to be held, Dorothy ran a comb through her thin white hair, her image blurred in the mirror still steamy from her long shower. She considered applying a little makeup, nothing elaborate, just enough to give her a healthy glow. But the rouge she found in the medicine cabinet had dried out, and her old red lipstick seemed too garish for a woman her age. “This will have to do,” she said to her reflection. Dorothy had picked out her outfit the night before, and now she carefully buttoned the cream-colored silk blouse and stepped into her brown wool skirt, the sensible shoes a concession to bunions over fashion.

The summons said she was due to appear at 11:00 at the courthouse in town. Dorothy had been anxious, of course, but she’d aced her appointment with the court evaluator and that had taken some of the pressure off. She’d been especially tickled when the social worker had noted how toasty warm her home was on such an arctic day.

Downstairs, Dorothy brewed a pot of strong coffee, inhaling the comforting aroma. She remembered reading in one of those women’s magazines at the dentist’s office that when you hold an open house to sell your home, you should bake cookies. But she wasn’t selling, and cookies were a bridge too far. Dorothy straightened some mail on the front table, fluffed the decorative pillows on the sofa, and walked slowly around the house, noting everything that Carlos had fixed in the week he’d been with her.

Then she picked up her cell phone and called her son.

“Paul, would you mind very much giving me a ride to the courthouse for the hearing? I would ask Valerie, but her children are home from school with the stomach flu.”

He didn’t respond immediately and then mumbled something that Dorothy had to ask him to repeat, finally agreeing to pick her up at 10:15.

At 10:20, Paul stopped the car on the street in front of the house and honked the horn. Dorothy came out onto the porch and motioned for him to come inside. “I just need to get my purse together,” she called. Paul shook his head impatiently, stepping out and closing the car door a little too forcefully. Dorothy watched as he stopped and turned in the direction of the newly exposed patch of yellowed grass on the left side of the house, what remained of where Carlos had dismantled the old jungle gym, carefully removing the swings, the slide, the ladders, piece by piece.

“You logged a lot of hours on that swing set,” Dorothy said, as Paul crossed the front lawn.

“Yeah. Good you got rid of it. It was an eyesore.”

Paul took the porch steps two at a time. Dorothy reached out to touch his arm, but he brushed past her.

“What’s this all about?” Paul said, looking at his watch. “We need to get moving,” Dorothy took a deep breath before heading into the kitchen, Paul following in her wake. “Sit down. Don’t worry, I won’t make us late.” She poured them each a cup of coffee, adding milk to hers and leaving his black, the way he liked it. “Humor an old lady, Paulie.”

Paul sat in his usual place at the kitchen table, cracking his knuckles, a nervous habit from when he was a teenager. He didn’t touch his coffee.

 Dorothy took a couple of small sips from her mug. Her own son staring at her across the table, not Carlos.

She pulled a tissue from the sleeve of her blouse and wiped away a stray tear, and then she said what she’d practiced in her head during the hours of sleeplessness the night before. “What you did was wrong. Petitioning to be appointed as my guardian . . .”

Paul abruptly pushed his chair back from the table and stood, towering over his mother. “I was trying to help, Mother. Things were falling apart.”

Dorothy shook her head. “Instead of involving the court, you could have come here yourself and sorted out what needed to be fixed. You could have visited with me and seen how I was faring. Were you trying to help when you let that broker walk around my home? I think you were helping yourself. You weren’t helping me.”

Paul turned toward the foyer, pulling his car keys from his pocket. “I don’t have to listen to this. The judge will decide what’s best for everyone.”

“I’m not through with what I wanted to say. Please, Paul, sit down. If your father were here, you’d show him that respect.”

Paul slunk back to his seat, Les’s presence now hovering over the room, a comfort to Dorothy and perhaps a warning to Paul.

“Although I don’t believe your motives were honorable, you did help me. I had let the house go and let myself go. That court case was a painful kick in the rear end, but it forced me to take myself in hand.”

As she spoke, Dorothy watched Paul look her up and down with raised eyebrows. She hoped he was noticing how put together she was. “Go take a look.” He got up and walked around the kitchen, then through the other rooms on the first floor, even went upstairs. When he came back, he seemed subdued.

“Not bad.”

 “I had a lot of help,” she said. Dorothy thought of Carlos and  how grateful he’d been when she’d pressed him to keep Paul’s old clothes.

“Listen, son. This is my house. I’m perfectly capable of living here on my own, and that’s my choice. Your guardianship petition is going to be denied. The court evaluator told me I’m no more incapacitated than he is.”

Paul started to interrupt, but the swagger had gone out of him. When Dorothy shushed him, he looked down at his feet and clammed up.

Dorothy came closer and stood next to him, speaking quietly. “Paulie, I don’t know if you’re broke, or homeless, or alone, or something else is going on. What I do know is that it hasn’t been right between us for some time, and I take responsibility for my part in that. But there’s no excuse for you to ask a court to hand over control of my assets to you instead of coming to me for help. It’s shameful.”

Paul slumped against the wall, his head in his hands.

“I’m prepared to make you an offer. If you withdraw the petition, you can stay here until you get back on your feet. You’re fifty-four years old. There’s no reason that you can’t get yourself together if I can do it at eighty-nine.”

Paul cried all of a sudden like he used to when he was a little boy, wildly, great hiccupping sounds and snot running down his face. Dorothy’s heart ached.

“I promise when I’m not capable of taking care of myself or this house, I won’t stand in your way. But I’m not there yet. Let’s go. You can decide on the way to the courthouse.”

She handed him a box of tissues and turned away while he got himself together, retrieving her coat from the hall closet, letting Paul help her on with it. As they walked by the patch where the swing set had stood, Dorothy pointed.

“We could plant some tomatoes here in the spring.”