I sometimes found him crawling across the carpet while she rode on his back, both of them pretending to be lions.
Other times, he sat beside her tiny table, drinking imaginary tea from a plastic cup while she decorated his gray hair with pink ribbons.
For such a serious man, he looked ridiculous.
But seeing them together slowly changed the way I saw him.
One afternoon, after finishing my errands, I sat in the kitchen for a few minutes to rest my aching feet.
Richard appeared with a cup of tea and placed it in front of me.
“I’m supposed to be taking care of you,” I said.
“Then consider this my rebellion.”
Over time, I stopped thinking of him as a wealthy man taking pity on me.
He became simply Richard—gentle, lonely, and unexpectedly kind.
