I put my hand on her ankle.
She let me leave it there.
She’s seventeen. The moments when she lets me leave my hand anywhere are fewer than they used to be.
“Who do you want to walk you out?” I asked. “Not who you’re supposed to want. Who.”
She thought about it longer than I expected.
Then she said, “Can Grandpa do it?”
My father is Duane Ostrem. He’s seventy-nine years old.
He milked Holsteins on the same quarter section east of town for fifty-one years. Twice a day. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year.
He sold the herd in 2011. The spring after my mother died.
He said the cows didn’t need a man who talked to them that much.
He still lives on the place. He still gets up at 4:30 every morning.
He had his left hip replaced two winters ago. He’s walked with a cane ever since. A plain wooden hickory cane, with a rubber tip he replaces from the farm store when it wears through.
Kaylee spent every summer of her childhood following him around that farm.
She learned to drive in his old Ford pickup out in the hayfield when she was eleven.
The same summer her father stopped calling.
“Grandpa walks really slow now, honey,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “I don’t care. I want it to be him.”
She turned her head and looked at me.
“And Mom? I want it to be just him. Is that okay? I want him to have it all by himself.”
That stung a little. I’ll admit it.
But I understood.
I’d be in the bleachers. I’d see it. And I wouldn’t have to be the one holding her together on the walk across that floor.
“I’ll call him tomorrow,” I said.
The next morning, between my eight o’clock and my nine o’clock patients, I called the activities director at the high school. Mrs. Larson.
Every senior turns in a form with the names of whoever’s walking her out.
Kaylee’s form said Jodi and Travis. I’d filled it out myself the week before. Without even thinking about it.
Mrs. Larson asked what name she should put instead.
“Duane Ostrem,” I said. “Her grandfather.”
There was a pause on the line.
“Oh, that’ll be nice,” she said.
And then, carefully, because it’s a small town and she wasn’t born yesterday: “Is everything all right at home, Jodi?”
“Everything’s fine,” I said. “Kaylee asked for her grandpa.”
That was true.
It just wasn’t all of it.
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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