The next morning, at eight o’clock, my mother and I pulled into the circular driveway together.

A security guard stationed at the front offered a quiet, respectful nod and opened the way for us, and I watched my mother take that in, the simple fact of someone standing guard for her, on her side, and something in her face eased.

She stepped through the front entrance of her own home, and she stopped dead.

Overnight, while she slept safely five miles away, I had brought in a professional crew, and they had worked until dawn.

The lingering smell of stale scotch and cigar smoke that had soaked into the place was gone, scrubbed and aired out and replaced with the clean scent of citrus and blooming jasmine.