We looked at four apartments together. We talked about the money and I offered too much and she took some of it and named the amount herself. We discussed a date and moved it twice and neither time was a crisis.

Helen’s nephew brought a van.

And on a Saturday morning in April with the sun out, my daughter carried a box down my front steps and put it in a van, and I stood on my porch and watched her do it.

Twenty years ago a caseworker took a seven-year-old out of that same door with a bag of clothes and I did not know it was happening until it had happened, and I never said goodbye, and I have thought about it every October since.

This time I stood on the porch and said goodbye. In daylight. To a person who was coming back on Thursday.

I did not know that was the thing I needed. Nobody could have told me. If you had said to me in November what you require is to watch her leave properly I would have thought you were cruel.