“Come on,” he said. “I’d better take you home before your grandmother comes looking for you.”

That night, Jamie sobbed into her pillow. What a silly girl she had been to hope that Joe Brammer might someday realize that deep down he had always loved her but had denied those feelings because she was too young. He was the only boy she had ever imagined kissing. The only boy she had imagined making love to.

Stupid. That’s what she was. A stupid, silly girl.

Jamie was recruited by the track coaches at several state colleges, but at the last meet of her senior season, she injured her knee going for a conference record in the long jump. At first, the operation to repair her torn ligaments seemed like a success, but her knee was never the same. She would be able to walk without a limp and even run-but not competitively.

Charlene’s family moved to California after graduation. The two girls promised to stay in touch, but Jamie wondered if they would ever see each other again, if she would ever have another best friend.

Thanks to her good grades and her scores on college entrance exams, Jamie was granted a tuition-waiver scholarship at the University of Texas in Austin. Her grandmother sent a hundred dollars every month to help with her dorm bill, and Jamie worked twenty hours a week at a dry-cleaning establishment. She had little time for a social life but did have several friends-girls like herself who had to work and were not in a sorority.

During the second semester of her freshman year Joe Brammer started to stop by the dry cleaner’s, and they would visit in between customers. He was thinking about applying for a fellowship that would allow him to study international law at Oxford during his last semester of law school. And he sometimes mentioned his girlfriend, but mostly they talked about their classes, music, current events, and what they wanted to do with their lives. Sometimes he came by just before her shift was over and walked her back to the campus.

That summer he didn’t come to Mesquite at all.

Her grandmother was well past eighty by then and no longer strong enough to clean other people’s houses. When Jamie left for her sophomore year at UT, her grandmother cried because she could no longer afford to send her any money. Jamie assured her that she could manage just fine, which she did by working longer hours and counting every penny.

She was thrilled when Joe dropped by the dry cleaner’s her first week back, and she dared to hope that maybe he wasn’t serious about the girl he was dating. But a couple of weeks later he came by to tell her that he was going to get married. When he left, Jamie went into the tiny bathroom and cried, running the water to muffle the sound of her sobs. She stayed in the bathroom so long that the manager knocked on the door and asked if she was all right.

Jamie tried to stop thinking about Joe, especially at night while she was waiting for sleep. She knew now that he was never going to fall in love with her. That she was still just a kid to him. But she didn’t have anyone else to take his role in her nighttime imaginings and wondered if she ever would.

Mid-November it became apparent that her grandmother was not well. Jamie finished out the semester then packed up and came home. When Granny protested, Jamie told her the decision was not negotiable.

It was strange to see her grandmother’s house unkempt. The only food in the refrigerator was on dishes Jamie recognized as belonging to Joe’s grandmother. When she returned the dishes, Mrs. Washburn hugged her and insisted on pouring her a cup of coffee. “I’m glad you’re home,” she said, patting Jamie’s arm affectionately. “Your grandmother needs you.”

Jamie spent several days cleaning the little house. In the process, she found a drawer full of unpaid bills and threats to discontinue service from the utility companies. She also discovered that her grandmother’s property taxes had not been paid in years, the mortgage company had begun foreclosure proceedings, and Granny’s bank account was overdrawn.

When she asked her grandmother about the bills, Granny said not to worry. “I’m expecting a check for thirty-eight thousand dollars any day now,” she explained.

“Who’s sending the check?” Jamie asked.

“I won it,” Granny said with a proud smile. “I kept getting these letters promising me a prize if I made a contribution to the war on cancer, so I finally sent a donation. And a nice man called and said I had won all this money. All I had to do to secure my winnings was send a check for eight hundred and seventy-two dollars. My winnings should come any day now.”

“I’m sure they will,” Jamie said with a sinking heart.

“And in the meantime, there’s some money in an oatmeal box on the top shelf of the pantry,” Granny said.

When Jamie looked, there was no oatmeal box in the pantry or anyplace else in the kitchen. Jamie applied for a credit card and used cash advances to cover Granny’s overdraft and pay the overdue bills. She used a cash advance on a second credit card to appease the mortgage company, which agreed to wait six months before foreclosing on the loan. She also got a job at a hardware store but had to quit when Granny could no longer get herself to the bathroom. Jamie told her grandmother that the prize money had finally arrived and began charging groceries, gas, and medical expenses not covered by Medicare. She made monthly payments on the first two credit cards with cash advances from a third.

With her grandmother all but bedridden, Jamie encouraged her to fill her waking hours with reminiscing and listened while her grandmother dug up old memories-good and bad. Jamie realized how difficult her grandmother’s life had been-being widowed as a young woman and raising her daughter on her own.

“The best of my life has been the last,” Granny told Jamie. “You have been my greatest joy and my crowning achievement.”

She died the next day.

After the men from the funeral home had taken Granny’s body away, Jamie called Ginger, whom she hadn’t seen in years. “I thought you’d want to know,” she told her sister.

After several seconds of silence, Ginger said, “I know you’re going to miss her.”

That night Jamie dreamed that their parents arrived just in time to be with her and Ginger at the cemetery when they buried their grandmother next to her husband, who died so long ago that no one except Granny remembered him.

Ginger arrived the next morning and walked through the house. “Did she have a will?” she asked.

Jamie shook her head.

That afternoon, Ginger returned with a rented truck and two burly men. “Some of this old stuff might be worth something,” she said. “I talked to a Realtor about selling the place.”

When Jamie explained that the house belonged to the mortgage company, Ginger accused Jamie of stealing her share of the inheritance.

Jamie walked through the house gathering up the things she wanted to keep and carried them out to the old Chevy, which Granny had already put in her name. That night she slept on a mattress apparently deemed too old and lumpy to be of value.

Ginger didn’t even stay for the funeral.

A surprising number of people did come, however, including Joe Brammer’s grandparents. “Your grandmother was a fine woman and our dear friend,” Mr. Washburn said with a bear hug. Mrs. Washburn embraced Jamie and kissed her cheek. “We’re going to miss her,” she said, “and you, too.” Jamie knew that the Washburns had purchased a retirement home in Georgia and would soon be leaving Mesquite.

She stayed in town long enough to scrub the house from top to bottom and settle her grandmother’s affairs. Then she carried the last of her things and Granny’s houseplants out to the car and, taking one last look at the little white house that had been her home for more than a dozen years, drove away with tears streaming down her face.