Raymond appeared behind her, wiping his hands on a rag, and the color drained from his face. “Lorie,” he said softly. “Oh, honey, it was supposed to be Christmas.” I demanded to know who this young woman was, and he said it was his daughter Janelle, who had driven in from Memphis every weekend since August to help. Janelle apologized for nearly ruining the surprise and then, to my astonishment, burst into tears.

He led me up the ramp and through the door, and I stopped cold. The kitchen was painted buttercup yellow, the exact shade I had described from my mother’s house. The doorways had been widened, the floors were smooth with no thresholds, the shower had grab bars, and there wasn’t a single step anywhere. “You joked that you might end up in a wheelchair like your mama,” Raymond said quietly. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I wanted you to have a home where you’d never worry about your knees.”

I asked why he had never told me, and he admitted the truth. His first wife, Joan, had fought a long illness, and he had spent years caring for her in that cramped house. After she passed, he couldn’t bear the idea of bringing anyone into it as it was. So he had been tearing it down to the studs, and that explained the sawdust, the paint, and the exhaustion that put him to sleep in Harold’s recliner. Janelle wiped her eyes and told me her father talked about me every single day. He had even planned to ask me to marry him on Christmas morning.

I sat down on a sawhorse and laughed until I cried, then apologized to a man I had briefly suspected of everything. Raymond shrugged and said any sensible woman would have checked. That evening I called Brandon, who drove out and stood in that yellow kitchen for a long time before hugging me. Raymond didn’t wait until Christmas to ask me, and I said yes right there, with paint on my good blouse.