He came in quietly. He held the door so it wouldn’t bang.
His clothes were old and dirty. A brown corduroy jacket worn shiny at the elbows. Gray pants with mud on the cuffs. His gray hair hung past his ears in tangled pieces, and his beard was patchy and uneven, like he’d tried to trim it himself with something that wasn’t scissors.
But his eyes were what I noticed.
They were pale blue and very kind, with deep lines at the corners, the kind you only get from smiling a lot at some point in your life. He reminded me so much of my grandfather that for a second I just stood there holding a comb.
Grandpa Walt had been dead for six years. But he used to stand exactly like that. A little bent. Hands folded in front of him. Like he was apologizing for taking up room.
The old man walked up to the front desk.
Kayla, our receptionist, looked up from her phone. She didn’t smile. Kayla only smiled at people with designer handbags.
