To let it go through would not have been mercy; it would have been abandonment of the boy at the deeper level, a confirmation that his mother was exactly the thing he had decided she was — someone who could be rolled over, whose dignity cost nothing, whose love could be counted on to forgive any cruelty because love that forgives everything is just another word for a resource.

I did not raise him to become a man who preys on the old and alone.

But I also did not raise him to believe that he could do such a thing and have his mother smile and hand him the keys.

The kindest thing I had left to give my son was a consequence — the true one, the one that might, in four years of state time, teach him the lesson I could not teach him at the kitchen table.

Whether it will, I do not know.

That part is his.

My part was to refuse, at seventy-one, to disappear on command, and I refused it.

I took a slow, peaceful sip of my tea, turned off the hallway light, and walked into a home that was entirely, irrevocably mine.

I took a slow, peaceful sip of my tea, turned off the hallway light, and walked into a home that was entirely, irrevocably mine.

THE END.