It was 91 degrees when I got off the plane.
The taxi cost $41.
The driver asked if I was visiting family.
I said, “Sort of.”
He laughed. “Those are the best kind.”
I had David’s street saved in my phone.
As we turned onto the street he had told me, I started looking at every house.
Then I saw it.
It was located about halfway down the street.
I saw the white porch rail, crooked number, and hydrangeas under the front window.
Blue and purple, exactly like the photographs.
I paid the driver.
Then I stood on that porch for a full minute with my jacket folded over one arm.
My heart was beating hard enough to make me feel ridiculous.
I could hear a television inside.
Then I knocked.
The door opened, and a boy stood there.
He was 17, maybe.
He wore shorts and a school hoodie but no shoes.
He had a phone in one hand.
“Is David here?” I asked.
The boy’s face changed.
He lowered his phone. “Oh no.”
Then he said my full name.
I gripped the handle of my suitcase. “Yes, that’s me.”
He stared at me.
“You’re really Helen?”
“Yes.”
He looked over his shoulder.
Then back at me. “You need to talk to my granddad.”
I almost sagged with relief. “He is your granddad?”
He nodded. “Yes, David.”
For about two seconds, everything felt fine again.
The house was real.
David was real.
Then the boy added, “But he hasn’t told you everything.”
The relief disappeared. “What do you mean by that?”
He opened the door wider. “Come in.”
I hesitated.
Every sensible instinct I had ignored for months came rushing back at once.
The boy must have seen something on my face.
“I’m Noah,” he said. “I’m his grandson.”
I stepped inside. The house smelled like coffee and furniture polish.
I recognized the hallway from one of David’s pictures.
The green mug was on the kitchen counter.
That stupid mug gave me more comfort than it should have.
Then a voice called from another room. “Noah, who is it?”
The voice was David’s. I knew it immediately.
Noah called out. “Granddad, you should come here.”
A few seconds later, David appeared in the hallway.
I immediately understood what he had lied about.
He was much older than the man in his photographs.
Not a little older. He was elderly.
He had white hair and deep lines around his mouth.
He had thin shoulders and walked carefully, one hand brushing the wall.
He stopped when he saw me.
His face went completely still.
“Helen?”
I could not speak.
He looked like him.
Same eyes and mouth. Same little tilt of his head as in the pictures he sent.
But the photographs he had sent me had been of a man around my age.
Maybe late 60s at most.
The man standing in front of me was not.
“How old are you?” I asked.
Noah looked at the floor.
David whispered, “81. I’m sorry I didn’t present myself truthfully.”
I laughed once. I couldn’t help it.
“Eighty-one? You told me you were 68.”
“I was afraid of telling you the truth.”
“No. You don’t get to say that like we’re discussing a typo.”
He lowered his head. Noah quietly disappeared toward the kitchen.
I looked at David. “Are those even you in the pictures?”
“Absolutely, just younger.”
“When were they taken?”
“About 15 years ago.”
I felt humiliated. Not because he was 81.
Because I had crossed 1,100 miles wearing a pale green jacket to surprise a man who had never let me see what he looked like now.
I looked around the house. “But you do live here?”
“Yes, the house is mine.”
“And you tend to your flowers?”
“Yes, the hydrangeas are mine, too.”
“What about your wife?”
His face changed. “She died four years ago. That was true.”
He glanced at me. “I didn’t lie about anything else.”
“Anything else you’d like to confess before I find out? Is that really your grandchild?”
Noah called from the kitchen, “I am his stubborn grandchild.”
I almost laughed.
David looked awful.
I said, “Why does he know my name?”
