Free Yappy Hour by Diana Orgain Page A

motive.…”
    Grunkly frowned. “No! Rachel wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
    â€œDid she say anything to you about leaving? About where she was going?”
    Grunkly’s eyes flicked over to the TV’s dark screen. I got a bad inkling that it was likely she’d told him something, only now he couldn’t recall because he’d probably been caught up watching something on the TV. He shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
    I felt completely deflated. I looked around the house at the mess and clutter. “Okay, well, let me help you clean up a little, and if you remember anything—”
    â€œWhoa! Clean up?” He held up a hand and waved me off. “No, no. I know where everything is, don’t bother.”
    â€œIt’s no bother.”
    â€œPlease!” he said.
    â€œI can’t leave you while the house is in such disarray, Grunk, let me at least vacuum.”
    He glanced around the floor, cluttered with objects. Of course, to vacuum we’d have to move everything. He hesitated, but I jumped into action, lifting a couple stacks of paper onto the dining room table.
    â€œWait, wait,” Grunkly cried. “Those are my to-be-paid bills; if you move them around I won’t be able to find them.”
    I placed the mail on the table. “Grunk, we gotta start someplace.”
    A sour expression crossed his face. He didn’t agree with me. After all, if you live eighty years in a place and all is well, why change anything?
    â€œI can’t let you keep the place like this. No nurse is going to want to work—”
    â€œThat’s right!” he said adamantly. “No nurse!”
    I flipped through his mail. “Do you need help paying these? Where’s your checkbook?”
    He smiled. “Now you’re talking! Leave the vacuum for next time. Help me with the bills. It’s getting so hard to read those things. Is the print getting smaller?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œI think it is.” He shuffled across the room and pulled out a checkbook from under another stack of papers. “I think they’re printing smaller to save paper. Be green. Isn’t that the latest thing?”
    We sat together in the dining room and walked through his bills step by step. When we got to an insurance statement, I asked, “What’s this?”
    Grunkly took the paper from me and squinted at it. He tried on several pairs of glasses, one without an arm that he had to hold in place, one pair that were bifocals, and then a third pair with black rims. “Ah!” he said. “These are the good ones.”
    â€œIf you throw out the other two pairs, you won’t get confused,” I said.
    He scowled at me. “Those are my backups!”
    â€œRight.”
    He looked at the statement again. “Oh, yeah. This is the building insurance for The Wine and Bark.”
    Grunkly owned the building and Rachel rented out the space from him. “It’s past due, Grunk.”
    He scratched at the stubble on his chin. “That’s because I was in the hospital. Let’s pay it now.”
    The date on the notice indicated it’d been mailed far after Grunkly’s heart attack, but he’d just as soon have another heart attack before he admitted it actually got lost in the clutter here.
    We proceeded through the rest of the mail and sorted all the bills out. There were several calculators on the table. Each one had a different company logo, all freebie promotional items that he’d collected throughout the years. I punched the number nine on one of the calculators and it stuck.
    â€œI think you can toss this one, Grunkly.”
    He picked up the calculator and put it to the side. “Oh no, Mags, it’s perfectly fine.”
    â€œThe nine sticks.”
    He fondled the calculator possessively. “I’ll use it for figuring out lower sums.”
    I sighed. Getting Grunkly to throw anything away would be a