Sweetheart.

We’re worried about you.

You haven’t been yourself in a long time.” Eleanor dabbed at a dry eye.

“She’s been so unstable lately.

So emotional.

It isn’t safe.” And there it was, laid out on the table between the good china and the untouched wine: a durable power of attorney, medical and financial, that would hand Nathan control of my care and my estate, presented to me as an act of love by a husband who had spent three years manufacturing the very instability he was now citing.

It was, I will admit, elegant work.