Six months ago, I buried my husband, Henry. Fifty years of marriage evaporated on a sunny April afternoon when his heart gave out while watering the geraniums. I found him on his knees, the hose still running, soaking his brown loafers. Since that day, my world had been reduced to silence and yellowing photographs. Robert insisted I move in with them.

“You can’t be alone, Mom. It’s dangerous,” he had said, his voice dripping with synthetic concern.

I packed my life into four suitcases and moved into their guest room—a cramped box at the end of the hall overlooking a brick wall. Dawn, my daughter-in-law, greeted me not as a mother, but as an intruder. From day one, I became the invisible maid. I cooked, I cleaned, I folded their silk sheets, and in return, I received silence from my son and venom from his wife.

But that afternoon, the soup was the breaking point.

“Look at this slop!” Dawn shrieked, looming over me. “Are you trying to poison us?”

I stood there, the ladle dripping at my feet, my head throbbing. I looked at Robert’s profile, illuminated by the blue light of the TV. He knew. He heard. He chose the sitcom.