I smiled and thanked her and let her believe every word had landed exactly as she intended.

The moment the door closed behind her, I rang the nurses’ station and told them, over the sharp protest of my own body, that I would be signing myself out that afternoon.

Rowena’s visit told me something I had needed to confirm, which is why I let it run its full length without a single objection.

I wanted to know whether the mother had known.

And she had — that was plain in the ease of her, the practiced grace with which she poured broth for the daughter-in-law her son had humiliated in a delivery room the night before, as though we were discussing a redecoration that had not gone quite to my taste.