What the envelopes proved was the part Corrine never accounted for. For three years she had been collecting rent from six tenants and depositing it into an account opened in our mother’s name using a power of attorney Mom signed in the fog of the month Dad died. My letters had contained statements, which is why they were never opened. The city cleared the house within a week. The financial exploitation case took fourteen months, and Corrine pleaded to it rather than let Mom testify, which I think was the one decent thing she did in the whole of it.

Mom lives with me now, in a room with a wide east window because she wakes early and always has. The house was sold. I did not want to walk through it again and neither did she. Corrine writes sometimes. Mom reads the letters. I have not opened one.

Last week Mom told me the hardest part was not the cot. It was believing she had become a burden heavy enough to deserve it. I told her she had never once been that, and she cried, and then she made toast, and we sat there in the light. Nobody who is truly seen ever has to earn their place in a room.