a kiss from Grampy John."

"I will. You know, if you need a place to stay, my door's always open."

"I appreciate that, honey, but I'm fine."

"Okay."

*

Valentine's Day rolled around and the day after, Katy is standing in the kitchen when the phone rings.

"I wanna get it!" Olivia, the three year old, cries, bouncing around the room.

"Okay." Katy listens as Olivia answers the phone and tells the caller that Mommy was right there. "Thank you," Katy tells Olivia as she accepts the receiver.

"Hello?"

"Katy Harrison Younger?'

"Yes."

"I'm afraid I have some bad news. A Mr. John Calvin Carpenter was found dead last night, and you are listed in his wallet as the contact."

"Oh my god." Katy sinks into a chair, tears flowing down her cheeks. "How? Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure. We need you to come and claim the body, or it will be given a county burial. He was sleeping in the park and he froze to death. Record cold temps, ma'am."

"I'll be there tomorrow."

The funeral planning passes in a blur and it seemed like only a day passed between the phone call and sitting in the funeral parlor, Alex's arm around her as the pastor reads from the Bible.

Katy clutches three index cards with snippets of memories of John written on them, and when the pastor called her name she stands and walks slowly but solidly to the pulpit.

"John Carpenter wasn't my father. He and my mother Lydia started dating the summer before I went to high school. He wasn't intimidated by a woman with a dead husband and a teenage daughter. He loved my mother and he loved me. John was more my father than anyone else.

"My mom and he never got married but that didn't mean that we weren't a family. It was John who punched the high school quarterback who tried to put his hand down my shirt at a ballgame. It was John who held me while I cried at my mother's funeral nearly eleven years ago. It was John who walked me down the aisle at my wedding. Now John is gone. But never, ever, if he going to be forgotten." She gathers up the cards and walks back to her seat.

*

On Memorial Day, they bring four sprays of flowers to the gravestone. Katy stands there and looks at it for a long while. Lydia Black Harrison lay next to her first husband, and on the other side stood John's marker. The inscription read "John C. Carpenter, Love Given, Love Received."

"I love you all." Katy whispers.

Learn more about this author, Rachel Fahnel.
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