But being needed and being valued are not the same thing, and the difference is starkest the moment you stop providing.

The truly loved person is loved when she is useless — when she is sick, or struggling, or just tired and giving nothing.

The merely useful person discovers, the moment she stops being useful, that the warmth she mistook for love was only appreciation of her function, and that it evaporates the instant the function does.

I found this out cleanly and all at once.

The day I stopped paying the bills and managing the calendars and smoothing the path, the Sterlings’ affection for me did not cool gradually.

It switched off, like a light, revealing that it had never been affection at all but only the pleasant hum of an appliance doing its job.