“Why are you scrubbing the patio, Mom?”

“Melissa’s hosting her supper club tonight. I don’t mind, honey. It keeps me busy.”

Keeps her busy — the exact phrase Derek had been feeding me through a webcam for a year. I looked at the corner of the yard. The rose bushes I had bought this property to hold had been pulled up and shoved into plastic buckets in the shade, replaced by an enormous outdoor dining set with the retail tags still hanging off the wicker.

“Show me your bedroom.”

The tour turned my house into a crime scene. She didn’t take me up the staircase. She shuffled through the kitchen, past a marble island covered in charcuterie, and opened the door to the cramped sunroom off the laundry.

A folding cot was jammed against the washing machine. A plastic card table held her blood pressure medication. Cardboard boxes, packed nine months earlier before her surgery, were still stacked against the glass.