My daughter-in-law laughed as she gave me a $2 scratch-off for my 73rd birthday. Ten months later, my own son shoved a senior living brochure in front of me and said, “We already picked your room.” They thought I was too old to fight back. They had no idea what I had been hiding.

“I think I made that harder.”

“You did.”

She cried then, quietly and without asking me to comfort her.

I passed her a tissue.

We did not hug.

Not every apology requires immediate intimacy.

As she left, she paused beside the little blue house ornament I’d kept hanging from a hook near the front window.

“Sophie talks about this place all the time,” she said.