He hums while I watch him fix the sandwich, and again I start to doubt whether Moms are right about Gramps needing to be taken care of—he’s taking care of me right now, isn’t he? And last night when I thought he called me by Mom’s name, maybe I really did misunderstand him. Katie and Sadie do sort of sound a lot alike, if you look at them as just two words.

“How was school today?” he asks, as he brings two of his famous PB&J sandwiches to the table. “What’d ya learn?”

“Long. And not much,” I answer. “But something interesting did happen. Gramps, do you remember about the girl who hates me?”

He sits down next to me, squints at his sandwich, and says, “Don’t tell me . . . Missy?”

“Close. Macy.”

“Ah. Macy,” he repeats. “She’s not giving you grief again, is she?”

“No,” I tell him, and I reach down into my backpack to retrieve the origami bunny. “She actually gave me this today.” I hold it out for Gramps to take. “She made it.”

He turns it around to examine it from all sides. “Gee, that’s really something.” He sets it down on the table in between us and says, “What brought on this change?”

“Mama told me if I just kept trying to be nice to her that she would come around, and I don’t know, I think maybe she finally is.” I take a big bite of my sandwich—Gramps’s PB&J sandwiches may just be rivaling French toast as my new favorite food.

Gramps takes a bite of his sandwich too, but then holds up his finger while he chews and swallows, like he just thought of something. “Or maybe it’s the opposite,” he begins. “Maybe you’re the one who’s finally coming around.” Gramps always has a way of saying things that makes me think about them in a different way.

I finish my sandwich and take out my homework.

Math.

Gramps is at the sink doing dishes, humming his usual tune, and I am stuck on the very first word problem.

I press the point of my pencil into my notebook so hard that the graphite tip breaks off completely. “Aghh!” I groan. I slam the pencil into the binding of the notebook and flip the cover closed, letting my head fall into my hands. “I can’t do this!”

“No, no, no,” Gramps immediately says, shaking his head as he dries his hands on the dish towel. “There’s no such thing as I can’t. I thought you knew better than that.”

“Not when it comes to math, Gramps.”

“You know, your mother used to struggle with math too,” he tells me. “And we had to figure out a way to make sense of it—that’s all. Like she said, everybody learns differently.”