My grown children had begun to argue about my future as though I were not sitting between them — Clinton mumbling that his father surely had some logical reason, Nancy talking in sharp practical tones about living expenses and the cost of the house, Douglas saying nothing at all.

Ninety years old, married sixty-nine of them, and in the space of ten minutes I had been transformed, in that room, from a wife into a logistical matter.

If Lawrence had wanted to show me exactly how quickly the world would move to manage me once he was gone, he could not have staged it better.

Which, I would soon learn, was precisely the point.

Chapter 13 — Stay Right Where You Are