“They want to sell the house,” she said.

“Put me somewhere with a nurse and a cafeteria and a schedule of activities.” She looked around Albert’s kitchen.

“I raised four children in this house.

I buried my husband from this house.

And my daughter sends me brochures with photographs of smiling old people doing crafts.” I did not know, that night, that I would end up in the middle of it.

I only knew that I could not stand the look on her face, and that somewhere over the winter, without permission and against the rules, the arrangement had become something the rules had no words for.