What changed her that week was not my speech in the corridor.

It was proximity, the same medicine it always is — seven days of actually being there, actually seeing, instead of imagining her mother’s decline from an airport lounge.

You cannot fear-manage a person you are in the room with.

You can only know them.

And once Sherry was in the room long enough to know her mother was thriving rather than failing, the fear had nowhere to stand, and the love underneath it could finally do something better than reach for a brochure.

On the last night, Sherry found me in the kitchen and said, awkwardly, not quite meeting my eyes, “Thank you.