I flew in from Dubai with a suitcase, a carry-on, and the grin of someone about to hand her mother a good surprise. The house was exactly as it looked in the closing photographs, pale blue siding, white porch rails, two maples out front, four years of mortgage payments wired from another continent. Corrine opened the door wearing our mother’s pearl earrings and the gold bracelet Dad gave her for their thirtieth. Four cars in the drive. A stranger crossing the upstairs hall with a towel. When I asked where Mom was, my sister said basement, and told me the upstairs rooms were for people who paid.

She was asleep on a cot by the furnace in July, in a winter coat, her prescriptions lined up on a folding chair. No smoke detector. No egress window. A space heater on an overloaded cord. Behind the paint cans sat a stack of my own letters, unopened. I photographed every room, called the attorney who closed the purchase, and sent him the deed, the bank records, and the pictures. At ten a code officer and a detective were on the porch, one with a badge and one with a red placard for the door.