“Are you out of your mind? You want my mother to p…

People look at real estate listings all the time. Patricia could have been browsing out of curiosity, out of boredom, out of some vague retirement fantasy about downsizing or moving. I told myself this even as my hands turned to the next page.

Page four was a letter. Not a printed letter, a handwritten one, three pages long, on the kind of cream-colored stationery that comes in a box from a gift shop. It was addressed to Daniel.

It began, My darling boy, I want you to understand why I’m doing this and why I need your help. I sat down on the office chair. I had not planned to.

My legs just stopped working the way legs are supposed to, and the chair was there, and I sat. The letter was dated six weeks earlier. Six weeks.

I had spent six weeks sharing dinners with this woman, accepting her casseroles, nodding through her opinions about my curtains and my kitchen layout and my herbs on the windowsill, while she had already written this letter, while Daniel had already read it, while the two of them had already begun whatever this was together. I read slowly. I read every word.