By the time my husband graduated from medical school I had spent eight years paying for it. On the lawn afterward his mother took the flowers out of my hands, he pushed an envelope into them, and I opened it standing in front of eighty people.

And I said okay.

That is it. That is the entire scene. It took nine seconds and I did not think about it again for four years, and when I finally did think about it, in a motel room on Thistle Road, I understood that I had been told no in a way that did not require him to say it.

Rosanne, in eight years, asked me one question about my work.

She asked, at a Christmas, whether the pharmacy was “just for now.”

I should describe that family properly, because “his mother didn’t like me” is not what it was.

They were not cold to me. That would have been easier and I would have left years earlier.

They were grateful. Loudly, publicly, at every gathering, for eight years.

Rosanne introduced me as “our Genevieve, who has been an absolute angel.” His father, before he stopped coming to things, used to raise a glass to me at Thanksgiving. His aunt sent me a card once, an actual card, thanking me for what I was doing for Teo.