Theo of Golden Summary & ending explained

The old man came to Golden a few days before Easter, when every tree in town was in flower. He would stay exactly a year.

He arrived from New York with no appointments, no plans, and nobody to answer to. Rivers had always pulled at him, ever since his boyhood by the Douro in Portugal, and Golden had one: the Oxbow, wide and slow, curling past the old warehouses.

On his first morning he set out on foot before the town was awake, and it took him hours to cover a few blocks, because everything interested him. Old ironwork. The history of the Promenade, the long green strip that ran down the middle of Broadway. A bird with opinions about breakfast. He kept a small magnifying glass in his pocket and was not too proud to kneel and use it on a flower. He was eighty-six, and as curious as a boy.

Later he found a coffeehouse on the corner of Light Street called the Chalice. A young man with a cello on his back smiled at him on the way out. The espresso, to Theo's great surprise, was excellent. But what held him were the walls.

Ninety-two pencil portraits hung there in black frames, all by the same hand. Old faces, young faces, worried faces, shy ones. Each seemed to be waiting for someone to notice it.

That afternoon he came back and went from frame to frame, so close he was almost touching the glass, for most of an hour. The barista, a friendly man named Shep, finally came over.

"Our local artist, Asher Glissen," Shep said. "They're all for sale. Hardly anyone buys them."

Theo checked the little price tags and frowned. They were worth far more. "Why?"

Shep shrugged. "Beats me. If I had the money, I'd take every one of them off the wall myself."

Theo said nothing. But something had lit up behind his eyes.

He crossed the street to the fountain in the middle of the Promenade and sat on a bench there until the shadows grew long. When he finally stood up, he knew what he was going to do with his year in Golden.