At two o’clock on a cold Thursday afternoon, I carried a glass dish of warm chicken soup up the wooden porch steps of my son Julian’s house.

The front door swung open before I even reached the mat, and Julian stepped into the doorway, his shoulders filling the way into the hall.

“She’s fast asleep, Mom,” he said. “I brought her some soup,” I said. “She hasn’t eaten a proper meal since Tuesday.”

Julian fiddled with the leather band of his wristwatch, sliding the silver buckle down a notch and cinching it tight against his wrist.

“It’s just a mild virus,” he said, the words coming out quick and smooth.

“The doctor said she needs plenty of sleep and complete quiet.” I set the glass dish on the kitchen counter and peered past his arm into the room.

A yellow plastic cereal bowl sat next to the toaster, half full of gray milk.

A thick ring of sticky brown syrup had dried around the inside rim of the bowl in hard little drips that ran down toward the soggy cornflakes.

Julian turned, saw what I was looking at, and snatched up the plastic bowl in one quick motion. He poured the milk down the drain, cranked the brass faucet on full blast, and rinsed the plastic clean before I could step any closer.

“You’re worrying over nothing, Mom,” he said, keeping his back to me while the water ran into the sink.

I looked at the wet counter around the basin. “Has she had any medicine today?” I asked.

“Only what the doctor gave us,” Julian said.

He shut off the tap, dried his hands on a dish towel, and moved between me and the hallway door once again.