We ended up talking for nearly an hour. Elias told me about the neighborhood back when there'd still been cornfields where the elementary school now stood. I told him about moving in, thinking I'd only stay two years.
"Funny how that works," he said. "I told my wife the exact same thing about this place in 1971."
He mentioned a nephew somewhere in the middle of it all. Dale, I think he said. He said the name the way people say a cousin's name they used to actually know, with a little pause right after it.
"He calls sometimes," Elias said. "When he needs something."
He shrugged like it didn't matter, but his eyes stayed on his coffee cup a beat too long. I didn't push it. It wasn't my business, and he didn't seem to want it to become mine.
I didn't push it.
When I stood to leave, I knocked twice on the doorframe out of habit. "Hey — next time you're grocery shopping, just call me. Save your back."
"I wouldn't want to bother you."
"Then don't think of it as a bother."
He smiled at that, slow and a little crooked, and I walked back across the strip of grass between our houses with my hands in my pockets, thinking I'd done one small, decent thing on a slow Sunday.
I had no idea that single cup of coffee had just started a clock that would run for the next twelve years.
Twelve years. That's how long one helpful Sunday quietly turned into a ritual neither of us ever bothered to name out loud.
Elias's health slipped in small increments at first. A slower walk to the mailbox. A hand that trembled pouring coffee that hadn't trembled before. Then driving became too much for him entirely, and I started picking up his groceries every single Sunday without either of us ever formally deciding on it.
Without either of us ever formally deciding on it.
In the first few weeks, he tried pressing cash into my palm at the door every time.
"Nolan, take it. I'm not a charity case."
"Elias, I'm already going to the store. Same trip either way."
"Then take it for the gas, at least."
"Next week," I'd say, both of us knowing I wouldn't.
Eventually he stopped offering, and we settled into something better. I'd put the milk in the fridge, the bread on the counter, and we'd sit at his small kitchen table with two mugs between us for however long the morning let us.
Some Sundays we talked about his late wife, Vera, and the garden she used to keep along the back fence. Other Sundays he asked about my job, my marriage, whether my wife and I had decided on kids yet. Some Sundays we barely spoke at all and just watched the birds work over his feeder.
I never thought of any of it as anything special. It was just what I did on Sundays.
