There is a particular cruelty in having your generosity used as proof of your incompetence — in learning that the very openness of your heart has been catalogued as a symptom.

The tears that had been on my face dried.

Something else was taking their place.

Something harder.

Because here is the trap they had built, and it was a clever one, and I have thought since about how many other old parents must be caught in the same one, quietly, with no Harrison to warn them.

A mother’s love, examined by a cold enough eye, can be made to look exactly like a failing mind.

Every generous, foolish, wholehearted thing I had done for my children could be rewritten in the flat language of an affidavit as evidence against me.