Juno caught me in the doorway before I touched the suitcase. She had a folder. Fourteen months of bank statements she had photographed from the kitchen printer, including the transfers of my house money into an account with only her father’s name on it, and the lease on a second apartment in Harrisburg. She had been collecting it since March. Then she said the sentence I will hear for the rest of my life. Take me with you.

We left at six the next morning, and I filed for the money back and won most of it eleven months later. Whitney left him that autumn for reasons of her own. The twins come every second weekend and their father drives them and does not come inside, and I have made peace with that arrangement, though it took two years.

I rent a small place four streets from where the old house stood. There is a porch. There is basil. Juno finished her degree in May and is applying to accountancy programmes, which surprises no one who knows what she did with that printer.

I spent a whole year believing that being needed was the same as being loved. My granddaughter was the one who taught me the difference, and I have not confused them since.