Walt trudged from the bus stop toward his brother’s house in the chill of an early autumn evening. The sack of bagels swung annoyingly against his leg. His face was puckered in a scowl. I should have given this all up months ago. It never did get me anywhere, not when Dad was alive and certainly not since. Walt’s brother Ted had remained adamant about maintaining the terms of their father’s will.
I knocked on the door of Mama Steve’s cottage. Nobody ever locked their doors in our tiny town of only six thousand people, But Esther Stevenson, known affectionately all over town as Mama Steve, would be 100 years old on the 4th of July, and I didn’t want to startle her. Mama Steve was expecting me, so when I didn’t get an answer to my knock, I opened the door and went in. I was there to interview her for our weekly newspaper’s special 4th of July edition.
“I’m so glad that you would make time for an old lady like me. I hardly ever get to meet any of Joseph’s friends.” It was early May when I sat in the perfect kitchen of this woman I had just met, but recognized from the photograph I had been given. Of course I knew what response was expected of me, and I didn’t disappoint.
