That’s what a wife is supposed to do.”

And then Alejandro reached down and lifted, into the frame, a wooden keepsake box that I knew better than almost any object in the world.

Inside it were my parents’ photo albums, and my late father’s vintage pocket watch, the one he had carried every day of his working life.

“This junk,” Alejandro said, grinning, “is going straight in the dumpster.”

“Don’t you dare touch those,” I said, very quietly.

All four of them laughed, my husband and my former best friend and my in-laws, laughed together at the sick woman on the little screen, and the line went dark.