My husband refused to walk my 17-year-old daughter, his stepdaughter for nine years, at her high school senior night. “That’s something a real father should do,” he told her. But when her name was announced Thursday evening, her 79-year-old grandfather appeared with his walking cane and proudly accompanied her onto the court.

He sold the herd in 2011. The spring after my mother died.

He said the cows didn’t need a man who talked to them that much.

He still lives on the place. He still gets up at 4:30 every morning.

He had his left hip replaced two winters ago. He’s walked with a cane ever since. A plain wooden hickory cane, with a rubber tip he replaces from the farm store when it wears through.

Kaylee spent every summer of her childhood following him around that farm.

She learned to drive in his old Ford pickup out in the hayfield when she was eleven.

The same summer her father stopped calling.

“Grandpa walks really slow now, honey,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “I don’t care. I want it to be him.”