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curls that she often left free on her days off. Shaun could remember his gran’s hair being longer, relaxed and straightened, but after his mama died, Sherry had taken on her daughter’s habit, keeping her hair natural and braided.
    Shaun’s mama had always kept Shaun’s hair cut short, probably because it was easier to deal with. Shaun tried growing it out after she passed, but he couldn’t figure out how to keep it braided like she did, and the short dreadlocks he tried were too much maintenance, plus sleeping on them gave him a headache. His gran never said a word about it, but when he came home after having it cut into a fade again, she smiled and nodded, just once.
    Now, as Gran bent over the pot of stew on the stove to give it a final taste for seasoning, the overhead light glinted off the white in her hair. There was much more white than black now, and even though her skin remained smooth—only smile lines around her mouth and crinkles at the corners of her eyes—Shaun was starkly reminded that she was forty years older than him.
    I don’t know how much longer I’ll have her.
    He swallowed back the thought and focused on the moment. He’d set the table for two, placing the flatware and glasses in the positions she’d taught him decades earlier. He’d been barely able to reach the table then, and now it felt too small, like he’d bang his knees on the underside when he tried to sit, even though he never had.
    The room seemed to shift around him, and he could see his mama standing by the refrigerator—not the shiny new one they’d bought a few years earlier but the older model he’d grown up with. She flashed him a smile and opened the door to get ice for their glasses, and when Shaun blinked, she was gone.
    “Baby, you okay? You look like you seen a ghost.”
    He had, but he couldn’t tell his gran that. He forced a smile. “Just my mind wandering again,” he said. “You need any help?”
    “You can come get the biscuits out of the oven while I dip out the stew.” She still made buttermilk biscuits from scratch more days than not, and Shaun had never tasted one nearly as good as hers.
    He grabbed pot holders from the rack on the wall and opened the oven door so he could pull out the pan of perfectly browned deliciousness and bring it to the table, where he set it on one of the wooden trivets his grandpop had made many years before. He’d done some woodworking in the unfinished basement off and on, building bookshelves and small tables and boxes, and when he’d died of a heart attack at just fifty-five years old, he’d left behind a half-finished dresser for Shaun’s bedroom.
    Shaun looked up from the table at the framed needlepoint that hung on the wall, then let his gaze travel over to the living room, where he could see the edge of the brightly colored crocheted afghan that hung on the back of the sofa. His gran had made the needlepoint when she was a teenager, and the afghan had been a wedding gift to his grandparents from Gran’s mother. The house was full of little things like that, items that Shaun used every day but rarely thought that much about.
    His gran might be the only living relative he had left, but the truth was that he lived every day surrounded by family.
    The realization hit him hard, and he had to catch his breath as he lowered himself into his chair. He’d spent so much time focused on what he’d lost that he’d almost forgotten to appreciate what he still had. His gran, sure, but also the house he’d grown up in, the pictures and keepsakes his mama had left behind, the wood pieces his grandpop made, and all the other items that had been a part of the home even longer than he had.
    A bowl of fragrant beef stew appeared on the table in front of him. “Your brain wandering off again, baby?”
    Shaun took a deep breath and let it out before raising his head to smile at his gran. “Just thinking how lucky I am.”
    Sherry took her own seat. “Blessed,” she corrected.