It felt wrong the moment I read it, something uneasy settling in my stomach immediately.
I closed the laptop entirely at first, telling myself I’d never actually consider something so strange, so obviously dishonest.
I opened it again twenty minutes later, unable to stop thinking about that specific dollar amount printed clearly beside the listing.
But after staring at that medical bill sitting open on our kitchen table, feeling desperate, I applied anyway.
I typed my application late that night, deleting and rewriting the same three sentences over and over.
I finally sent it right before midnight, closing my laptop quickly afterward as though that would somehow stop me from taking it back.
Uncertain how to explain why I felt qualified for something this strange.
I didn’t hear back for almost five days, long enough that I’d nearly convinced myself the listing had simply been fake all along.
I checked my email obsessively during that stretch, refreshing my inbox between classes more times than I’d care to admit.
A week later, I got the job.
The confirmation email arrived while I was on my lunch break at the diner.
My hands shaking slightly as I read through the details on my cracked phone screen.
I met Renata first, in a coffee shop near her father’s house, her expression carefully professional throughout the entire interview.
I arrived ten minutes early, nervous energy making it impossible to sit still while I waited.
She ordered a black coffee she never actually drank, sliding a folder of paperwork across the table almost immediately after I sat down.
She asked about my school schedule, my availability, whether I’d ever cared for elderly relatives before.
Questions that felt more like a formal job interview than I’d expected.
The veteran’s daughter explained that her father, Mr. Ashworth, had lost his sight three years earlier.
That his real granddaughter no longer spoke to him.
“It’s complicated,” she said, when I asked why. “Family things. She stopped writing years ago.”
The family didn’t want him spending his final years completely alone.
She explained, especially now that his health had started declining more noticeably, that the arrangement felt urgent to her.
I nodded along, still uncertain whether I was actually going to accept a job this strange when it came down to it.
Renata slid a small contract across the table, standard boilerplate language mixed with specific instructions about maintaining the pretense consistently.
So every Sunday, I visited.
