Title: Living Someone Else's Life
Word Count: 330
Note: Written for all_unwritten prompt, "living someone else's life."

It happened slowly, unexpectedly. One day she was just helping her grandma run errands since her car was in the shop -- taking her to the doctor's office and then stopping by the grocery store afterwards.

Then, later that week, stopping by after work every day, ostensibly to simply "check in," making sure the sweet, old lady didn't need anything. Then, all Hell broke loose in her personal life -- she had to move, she was laid off, she broke up with her boyfriend... There was no other choice but to move in with the kindhearted old woman who had taken care of her as a child. Wasn't this her opportunity to return the favor?

But, as the weeks and, soon enough, months wore on, she realized she was living someone else's life. This was NOT the life of a young twenty-something -- she should have been living and loving, not nursing and nurturing.

While she had no real problem caring for her good-natured grandmother, she silently fumed at her parents. Really, it was their responsibility wasn't it? But, they had moved years ago, leaving her with a burden that was not her own; never thinking of the future and how their decision would affect the people around them. How the wrinkled woman would be stubborn and refuse to move to the cold climes of the north; how she would do everything in her power to stay as independent as possible, even though she begrudgingly admitted that she loved having her granddaughter there.

And when the young woman picked up the phone that day, dialing the number for her parents' house, she wondered how it had come to this. How was it that she was doing the thing she'd always imagined someone else doing?

The phone rang once, twice, then three times. Finally, someone picked up.

"Hello?" a woman's voice asked -- her mother never checked the caller ID.

"Mom...I've got some bad news. Grandma died..."

Of course, silence followed.