I showed her the photographs of the moving boxes, the golf clubs, and the shower chair in my shed. Allison went pale. She hadn’t known Spencer had already used the spare key. He had promised his parents a home that was never his to give, and he had counted on me caving the way I always had. My granddaughters asked why Grandma was crying in the driveway. I wasn’t. Their mother was. That evening, Spencer called me himself and apologized, his voice tight with embarrassment.

I didn’t leave Dwight and Peggy stranded. They hadn’t asked for any of it; their son had told them I was thrilled. Patricia found them a ground-floor condo near their church in Charlotte, and their landlord agreed to extend the townhouse lease by one month. I drove their boxes there myself. Peggy hugged me at the door and said she was mortified. Dwight sent me a thank-you card with a gift certificate for the hardware store.

Allison didn’t call for another two weeks. When she did, she apologized, really apologized, for calling me selfish and for treating my home like a family storage unit. She admitted she had stopped seeing me as a person with plans of my own a long time ago. The mudroom gear went back to her house that weekend. I told her I loved her, and that I still did, but that my calendar belonged to me now.

Fifty-two days after that birthday dinner, I woke up in the cabin Arthur and I had dreamed about for thirty-six years. I drink my coffee on the porch every morning and watch the fog lift off the ridge. My granddaughters come up one weekend a month, by invitation. Last time, Allison brought me a belated birthday cake. We ate it outside, and nobody asked me for anything.