My mother often told me, “Don’t sit on Grandpa’s lap.” I never understood why. One day, I didn’t listen to her and sat down anyway. Grandpa smiled, leaned close to my ear, and whispered, “Can you come sleep beside me tonight?”

“Can you come sleep beside me tonight?”

I stopped smiling.

“What?”

He gently squeezed my shoulder.

“Just you and me. Like old times.”

I stared at him.

Old times?

I was nine.

What old times?

My grandfather leaned back in his chair as if he hadn’t said anything unusual at all.

My mother was still standing near the dining table.

Her face had gone completely pale.

And that was the moment I realized something.

My mother wasn’t angry because I had disobeyed her.

She was scared.

I just didn’t know why.

---

Grandpa George had always been my favorite person to visit.

He wasn’t the loud grandfather.

He wasn’t the kind who shouted across the house or told embarrassing stories at dinner.

He was quiet.

Patient.

The kind of person who could sit in the backyard for forty minutes repairing a broken bird feeder while I talked about absolutely nothing.

He also had a refrigerator that seemed to contain an endless supply of chocolate.

Not normal chocolate, either.

The expensive kind.

The kind my mother never bought because she said it was “a ridiculous amount of money for something that disappears in three bites.”

Grandpa disagreed.

“That’s why we buy more,” he’d whisper to me.