I took care of my 85-year-old neighbor for her inheritance, but she left me nothing — then her lawyer knocked the next morning with a dented lunchbox and a key I wasn’t supposed to recognize.

“Then die hungry.”

Some evenings, we watched game shows together. She yelled at contestants like they could hear her. She told me pieces of her life, and I started telling her things I never told anyone: foster homes, learning not to get attached, never planning beyond the next rent payment because hope felt unsafe. One night, she muted the TV and looked at me hard.

“You only think about surviving next month, James. Don’t you have dreams?”

I shrugged.

“I guess I’d like to keep working at the diner. Maybe get promoted one day.”

“Well,” she said, unimpressed. “I suppose that’s something.”

That winter, she gave me a pair of green knitted socks so ugly I did not know whether to thank her or file a complaint.

“I made these,” she said, shoving them at my chest. “So your feet don’t freeze.”

At the diner, Joe noticed I had been rushing out after shifts.