And I understood, all at once, that the frail old woman I had bathed and fed and sat up with had, in her last lucid months, carefully and deliberately made me safe, for the rest of my life — while I had thought I was the one taking care of her.

There is something in that reversal I have never fully gotten over, and I do not think I want to.

For three years I had understood our relationship in one direction: I was the strong one, and Evelyn was the one who needed.

I gave, and she received.

I was the caregiver, and she was the cared-for, and I did not resent it, but I also never questioned the shape of it — that the current of help ran, always, from me to her.

And the whole time, in her silence, in her failing body, with what little the stroke had left her, she was running a current back the other way that I knew nothing about.