“Daniel doesn’t have a consulting job lined up until the middle of January,” Eleanor said, her voice shaking a little in the cold air.

“Could you leave five hundred dollars on the kitchen counter before you go?”

She held out her hand, her fingers trembling in the chill.

It was the first time in three years she had ever asked me for money without wrapping it in a sermon about a wife’s duty.

I studied her face, the deep lines cut around her mouth and the thin strands of gray hair slipping loose from her hairpins.

For a moment, a quiet sadness settled in my chest for the home I had worked so hard to hold together under that roof.