Nolan had turned ten in September, grown two inches in a single summer, and developed opinions about propulsion systems that he shared with anyone who held still.

My mother had her own room now, with a window that faced east because she liked to be woken up by something other than an alarm.

The radiator worked. Nobody sang to anybody to distract them from the cold.

I had been at Ridgeline Medical Group for nineteen months, checking patients in at the front desk of the orthopedics clinic, and in August my supervisor, Danette, pulled me into the little room with the broken chair and told me she was putting my name in for practice coordinator.

“It’s a real job, Audrey,” she said. “Salary. Not hourly. You’d be running the front for all three clinics.”

I did the arithmetic on the drive home and had to pull into a church parking lot because I couldn’t see the road.