Claire is four now. She has Patricia’s eyes and a stubborn little chin that I recognize from both sides of the family. She calls me Grandpa Walt and believes I can fix anything, which is both the sweetest compliment in the world and a burden I accept with full seriousness. When she was born, I opened a 529 college plan for her and put fifty thousand dollars in to start, then set up automatic monthly contributions.
I told Marcus I had opened an account for her education.
I didn’t mention the amount.
Renata said, “That’s very thoughtful,” while checking something on her phone.
That was the first thing about her I started to notice.
She was thankful when something came easy. Not deeply thankful. Not the kind of thankful that remembers the hand behind the gift. More like a person acknowledging a credit applied to an account.
Still, I tried not to judge. Everybody has their own way of moving through the world. Patricia had taught me that. “Walter,” she used to say, “not every quiet person is kind and not every difficult person is bad.”
So I kept trying.
But over time, Renata’s eyes changed when she looked at me.
Not openly. She was too smart for that. It was small things.
A pause when I pulled up in my truck at Christmas instead of some shiny luxury SUV.
A little smile when I said I still did some repairs around my own properties.
A comment at Thanksgiving about how “some people get attached to houses instead of making them work financially.”
She would look around the cottage as if she were not visiting a home but inspecting an underperforming asset.
