If I had known, at that table, that I was signing up for twelve years, I do not know that I would have been brave enough to say yes.

And then I would have missed the most important thing I have ever done.

And so she came to us.

And so, over the years that followed, she also became more and more alone — not because I was not there, but because I was the only one who was.

Chapter 3 — Why I Didn’t Turn Away

The neighbors talked.

They always do.

“Poor Mabel,” they would say, in the low voices people use when they mean to be overheard.