could I not be? I’m in paradise.”
        Sharon smiled a wide, homely smile, exposing long, uneven teeth. “Isn’t that the truth?”
        After several more pleasantries, Sharon said Ingrid was awake and expecting him.
        He tapped on her door, then eased it open.
        “Good morning!” he chirped again. “How are you?”
        “Good morning,” she rasped.
        Ingrid had a square, somber face, a bit weathered and lined, sad dark eyes, and straight black hair cut into a bob. He set her latte on the tray in front of her.
        “Thank you,” she said. “Oh, it smells good. Is it a latte?”
        “Yes,” he smiled. “And a bear claw.”
        “Thank you,” she purred, assessing the sweet confection before her. “Mmm, that looks sooo good.”
        They consumed their little breakfast, sipped their coffees, and talked about this and that. How did you sleep? It’s beautiful again today. But then, it’s always beautiful here. Did you hear about so and so on the news?
        When they ran out of small talk, there was a brief lull. Then Ingrid, sitting up with her hands folded carefully in her lap, began rather formally. “Yesterday you asked me about my mother. I didn’t want to start in on that topic at that point because it was getting late, but today I’d like to talk about her.”
        “Okay,” Michael said, sensing a bit of awkwardness. “That would be nice.”
        Sitting in a chair next to the bed, he gazed at her and waited.

#

        Ingrid was, for all intents and purposes, Michael’s aunt. Originally, she was his first cousin-once-removed, or his mother’s first cousin. Then, many years ago, Michael’s maternal grand-father died about the time Ingrid’s mother died, leaving Michael’s grand-mother a widow and Ingrid’s father a widower. In the European tradition – all involved were German immigrants – the widowed grandmother married her widowed brother-in-law, and with that, Ingrid was officially no longer Michael’s first cousin-once-removed, but his aunt, or step aunt. Either way, to avoid confusion, he’d always referred to her simply as his aunt.
        And she had stage-four lung cancer, spread to the bones and brain. Six or eight months previously, she’d wanted some landscaping done in her backyard, which included moving several small boulders, and hired some workers. But she got impatient and tried to budge one of the boulders herself, just to move it a few