“For your mother-in-law, Martha.

I know how much time Rachel spends driving across town to manage Martha’s daily routine.”

Ethan scanned the text, his shoulders dropping two inches as he read.

“This agency provides six hours of daily assistance,” Ethan said.

“They cover bath visits, meal preparation, and transportation.”

I stepped around the examination table and took the paper out of Ethan’s hands.

Along the right-hand margin were three handwritten figures in Sylvia’s dark blue ink.

Forty-five dollars an hour, three days a week, with a monthly total of three thousand two hundred dollars written in double-underlined script at the bottom.