Silence, and I dialed Marc’s number.
He arrived in less than an hour with a neighbor, helped me up, accompanied me to the emergency room, and waited all afternoon on a hard chair until the doctor told me I hadn’t broken anything. Then he took me home, heated up some soup, and checked that I had my medication within reach.
“That’s what family is,” he said simply, putting away the cutlery. “The real thing.”
I turned 90 the following summer.
I organized a small party in the common room of the residence: a cake, fruit juice, a few neighbors, my two grandchildren whom I almost never see, Sophie… and Marc.
He arrived with a homemade chocolate cake, a little sunken on one side, and a photo album: our Tuesday outings, my first time wearing a helmet, our
