Then she reached into her purse and pulled out one more little slip of paper and pressed it into my hand. I figured it was another receipt. It wasn’t. It was a grocery list in Grandma’s shaky handwriting from years back, before she got bad.

Cornbread mix. Bath soap. The lavender kind she liked. Diane had kept it all that time.

“She used to write these every Sunday,” Diane said, real soft. “I kept this one.” That was all. She squeezed my hand once and walked off to talk to the funeral home man.

I stood there holding that little list. And I finally understood what the rest of us had been doing those four months. We were busy counting what Grandma left behind. Diane was the only one still buying her bath soap.

That grocery list is taped to my refrigerator now. I look at it every morning. I still haven’t called her.