It was a hairline fracture in the hip, as it turned out — not the catastrophe it could have been; she was home in five days with a walker she despised and a course of physical therapy she called “an indignity,” and she would be walking without either by spring.

But a scare does not do its damage in proportion to the injury.

It does its damage to the story a family tells itself, and the story Sherry now told herself was that the worst had nearly happened and next time would.

Sherry flew in.

And in the hospital corridor she said the thing out loud at last: that this settled it, that the house had to go, that Enid was coming to live near her where she could be looked after, and that it was time to stop being stubborn.

And I stood there, the lodger, the temporary girl, the arrangement-not-adoption, with no standing to say anything at all, and I opened my mouth and said it anyway.