“Took you long enough,” he greeted me when I got out of the car after driving up the long gravel driveway. The land surrounding my childhood home lay fallow, and the woods in the distance immediately put me at ease. God, I’d missed this, the open air, the view of the mountains.
Ben was half my height and slender, with a thick bushy moustache and beard. All his hair had become snow white a year ago. There were age spots on his face and arms, and the fingers on his left hand were permanently curled into his palm. The joints were swollen. Ben had gotten skinnier, if that were possible, since I’d last seen him, and he wore an old, long-sleeved flannel shirt over a dirty white undershirt. The worn leather belt holding up his ragged jeans was the one I’d given him for Christmas five years ago,
