The old woman smiled at me and patted the seat on the bench next to her.

I glanced over my shoulder, ready to step aside for whoever she was inviting.

But there was no one behind me.

She smiled a bit wider and patted the bench again.

Her shiny, wrinkled skin bunched up over her gnarled, arthritic knuckles, and her blunt, rippled nails tapped the lacquered wood.

I shrugged my shoulders to push my coat up a little bit higher, obscuring my mouth partially with the collar as I muttered.

Do I know you?

Of course you do. She had a voice that sounded like it came off an old record.

Don't you know your old granny when you see her? She shook her head. The sun beamed right through her

thin white hair. It was thinner than carted cotton, which made it look like she had a halo arching over an otherwise bald head.

It hasn't been that long since Christmas.

It was nearly spring, but she was old, and I was not about to hold her accountable for her memory,

especially when it seemed like my own was failing.

I had a grandmother, but she died when I was 10.

She lived in Maine, from what I remember, many states away from Florida.

I remember her hair being brown, not white, and she always wore red sweatshirts with little bears embroidered on the front.

This woman was wearing a short-sleeved floral button up over a pair of khaki shorts

and had her feet stuck through a bright pink pair of flip-lops.

She sat hunched over on the bench with her crooked fingers, working their way through a bag that had a pair of knitting needles sticking out the side, but she was not pulling out anything to work on.

It was difficult to see her eyes. They were obscured behind thick, coke bottle lenses that were opaque, like frosted glass. Yet they were pointed at me

with such an aura of expectation that I felt like I had no choice but to sit down. What harm

could it do anyway? She was a harmless old woman at the end of the day. And if she had lost

...