“You think you would have what with Paul?” I said. This was something Lola had taught me: to repeat the part of the sentence I’d understood, so he wouldn’t have to work so hard to make me understand. He repeated it, but I still didn’t understand. He made a choppy, effortful gesture, hands together swinging an imaginary golf club, and then I understood. “You don’t really enjoy golf that much,” I said. Over the years, he’d played sporadically, without the passion he brought to running or fishing.

He took quick breaths inside his sentences. “I think I would have . . . liked it with him. Dad’s so . . . comp-et-it-ive.” He stumbled on the longer word, taking a breath in the middle. He took a sip of his beer. At a recent visit, Dr. Auerbach had recommended giving up alcohol, and I’d briefly rallied in favor of this idea. But Dennis didn’t ever drink much in one sitting, and I’d remembered how good a cold beer tasted during an afternoon on the boat, or how good wine tasted when we were sitting together on the back deck in the evening. We hadn’t spoken of it again.

On Saturdays, they might be gone on the boat until noon or later, but on Sundays Paul had to be back for church. Early on, Paul had brought over a wooden workbench and they’d set it up near the water, and that’s where they gutted the fish. Paul hosed down the blood and they spilled the guts into the canal, and then packed the fish tightly in plastic wrap and divided the catch. When Dennis got home, he would shower and rest, and then Lola or Stuart might arrive for exercises, and by the afternoon the house would be full again. Several times when Gloria and Grady had been over, we’d run out of the prepared meals Marse had ordered for us, so Gloria had called the catering company and increased the spread: now the refrigerator was always full, and every time I opened it I felt a wave of relief and gratitude.

After the incident with Stuart and Lola, weeks passed without any hint of impropriety, and I started to doubt what I’d seen. Stuart remained his usual outspoken, grating, charming self, and he continued to visit almost every day. Margo was teaching summer classes—she was unavailable during much of the week—and so Stuart started to schedule his work hours around mine as much as possible, so he could be at the house when I wasn’t. This was not something I’d asked him to do. One afternoon, Stuart and Margo and Gloria and Grady and I were in the kitchen at the same time, jogging around each other, while Lola and Dennis were out back. Margo and Stuart were making lunch, Gloria was making lemonade, and Grady was looking for an old washcloth to wipe down the steering column on the boat, where he’d accidentally applied too much WD-40. While I was bustling around, getting a washcloth for Grady and sugar for Gloria, Stuart was dicing tomatoes, and he asked me—it was bad timing, but he’d never been one to wait for an opportunity to speak—what shifts I was working for the rest of the week. I paused in front of the open refrigerator. “Is today Tuesday?” I said to Stuart. I handed Grady the washcloth, and he went out the back door.

Stuart sighed. “Frannie, you need to put up a schedule.” He pointed to the refrigerator door, where there were four prescriptions and two wedding invitations—this was, as Stuart had noticed, the place where my reminders went.

“A schedule?”

“Write it down, and I’ll print it out on my computer.”

“I can print it out,” I said. We didn’t have a computer at home, but I used one at work; I was perfectly capable of making a calendar. “Is that necessary?”

“It is for us,” said Stuart. “We show up here, but we don’t know your work schedule or when we’re needed. You need to start delegating.”

“Delegating what?”

Stuart put down the knife. Apparently, he was finding me trying, and I wasn’t quite in the mood to humor him. Margo said, “Let’s not—” but Stuart put up his hand. He took a deep breath. “I’m just saying, if you posted your schedule, maybe we wouldn’t all end up in your kitchen at the same time, fighting for space.”

“Young man,” said Gloria. She continued to section lemons as she spoke. “I’m not sure that tone is necessary.”

He turned back to the cutting board. “I apologize.”

“You don’t have to be here,” I said to him. “Why don’t you go home?”

“Mother!” said Margo.

“I didn’t ask for a full house. I did not ask for—” I stopped. My voice was shaking.

“I’m just saying, a schedule would make things easier,” said Stuart.

“Goddamn it,” I said.

Gloria stepped toward me and, in an uncharacteristic gesture, put both arms around my shoulders. I shook inside the circle of her thin arms. “I’ll make a goddamn schedule,” I said. I realized even then, even while on the verge of throwing my son-in-law out of my house, that this was a practical idea.

“All right,” said Gloria.

Stuart left the room. Margo went after him, patting my back as she went. When I’d composed myself, Gloria let me go. We stood at the counter, looking out toward where Dennis stood in the swimming pool with Lola, lifting the water-filled weights above his head one at a time. I saw him struggling with each movement. I saw his muscles trembling. “I would have thought I’d be stronger,” I said.

“You’re plenty strong,” she said.

“I’ll stop feeling sorry for myself now.” And as if something had jarred loose inside me, I felt suddenly that I could do it. I could stop mourning what I’d thought I would have.

“No one blames you,” she said. “Except the boy, of course.”

I laughed a little and she joined me. Then she picked up the pitcher of lemonade and headed outside. When she reached the door, she paused. “It would be a shame if you left,” she said.

In August, almost a year after Dennis’s diagnosis, Dr. Auerbach’s nurse fitted him for a palatal lift, which made speaking easier by keeping air from escaping from his nose while he talked. We also bought a voice box, which Dennis held up to his mouth when speaking, to amplify and save his voice. The palatal lift was covered by insurance, but the amplifier was not; it cost $350. That same week, my car engine started knocking. I took the car in and was told in no uncertain terms that I needed either a new car or a new engine. Dennis and I debated—we would get nothing for the car if we sold it without a new engine, but there was no reason to keep both cars at that point. At the end of that week, Paul took Dennis’s car to a friend’s lot and sold it for $3,500, and we used the money to buy a new engine for my car. Then, the following week, Paul and Marse stopped by for dinner, and during dessert, Paul said to Dennis, “I hate to be the one to tell you, buddy, but I think you have termites.”

Dennis brought his voice box to his mouth. “Where?”

“I saw some loose wood on your garage door, then more in the baseboards in the living room. I did some digging—you’re infested.”

I could see Dennis tensing up. “No problem,” I said. “We’ll tent the house. We’ll vacation at the Biltmore for a few days. You and Lola can exercise in that gorgeous pool.” I tried to keep my voice light, but I was thinking: How much does a termite treatment cost? Was it hundreds or thousands? Was it ten thousand? There was the possibility of getting a line of credit against the house, but that presented a new problem, one to which I’d scarcely given any thought: When Dennis died, would I sell the house? The house that had been given to us? Would I ever feel right profiting from Dennis’s parents’ investment? But if I didn’t sell, what then? No home loan could ever be repaid, so no loan could ever be taken. By accepting the house, we’d put ourselves in this position: no real equity, no real assets. If our positions were reversed, Dennis could certainly sell the house—it was his birthright. But it wasn’t mine.

“You’ll stay at my condo,” said Marse. “I’ll stay at Paul’s.”

“There’s a guy at my church who can cut you a deal,” said Paul.

That week, I volunteered for more weekend shifts at work, and from then on Stuart and Margo came almost every weekend day, and when I arrived home in mid-afternoon, I found them—and usually Gloria and Grady or Marse and Paul—either on the back deck, or in the pool, or in the living room playing a board game. Or I’d find the house empty and a note stuck to the refrigerator: OUT FOR A RIDE (BOAT), or OUT FOR A RIDE (CAR). I had taken up the habit of posting a calendar of my schedule on the refrigerator. Dennis had rolled into the kitchen after I’d posted it the first time. I’d seen him take it in, then turn away.

One Sunday, Grady approached me in the kitchen while I made a pitcher of iced tea. “I come as an emissary,” he said, “for Gloria and myself.” He covered my hand with his. “We want to give you some money.”

I sat down at the kitchen table and sipped from my water glass. “I can’t, I’m sorry.”

“This is not something one prepares for,” he said. He sat down across from me. “Marse told us about the termites—we should have had the place tented years ago. I knew it when we left. We did it once—let’s see, it was ’seventy-five—but honestly, you have to do it every decade with these old houses. It’s my responsibility.”

“You’re very kind.”

“I mean to be convincing.” He pulled a checkbook from his back pocket. “Do you have a pen?” he said. And this was the most humiliating part—not the weakness of my protest, not the relief that must have been obvious on my face, but the act of getting up and crossing the room to fish a pen out of the junk drawer, and walking back to him and handing it over. He gave me the check and I folded it without looking.

“I don’t think I know how to thank you. I wish we’d—” I stopped. “I wish we didn’t have to accept this.”

“This is what you do for your children. You’ll do it for Margo.”

We left unsaid the fact that, given the present situation, I would probably not be able to do it for Margo. I hugged him before we left the kitchen. “Thank you very much,” I said.

“Dennis is my son,” he said, as if this were all the explanation required. He added, “And you are my daughter. If you need more, you tell me.”

That evening, Marse and Dennis sat in the living room with magazines, and I told them I had forgotten to fill one of Dennis’s prescriptions, and needed to run out. I went to the bank and used the drive-through machine to deposit Grady’s check. I didn’t look at it until I filled out the deposit envelope: it was for $20,000. I cried out when I saw it. I covered my mouth with my hand as relief pulsed through me. Even after we paid for the tenting—the estimate we’d gotten from Paul’s friend was $1,500—this would last for months. If we were frugal, it might last a year. From time to time, even now, I think about Grady’s words—This is not something one prepares for—and about how we might have better anticipated this wrinkle in our lives. We had not saved enough, I suppose. We’d planned for retirement, of course, but not for emergencies. We’d figured we had the house for collateral if we needed it—but this eventuality, Dennis’s early demise, made our retirement funds seem insignificant. Selling the house or even taking a loan seemed suddenly impossible. Looking back, I think that I should have started drawing against our retirement accounts. There would have been penalties, of course, and the money would have needed to last much longer than we’d planned; but after all, it would have had to be only enough for one.

Looking back, too, I realized that this money from Grady and Gloria was probably not difficult for them to give—not only because, unlike my mother, they had it to give, but also because they were advancing in age and thinking about what they would leave behind, and realizing there would be one less person to whom to leave it. This had not been in their plans, either. Dennis’s illness was sabotage, for all of us.

It was not until September that I saw again what I’d seen at the start of the summer, between Lola and Stuart. I was in the backyard watering the gardenias, and Lola and Dennis and Stuart were in the pool, not really exercising but just goofing around. Then Dennis pulled himself out and I helped him inside to take a bath, and when I came out again to roll up the hose, I saw Stuart dive under to pull Lola down by her legs. When they came up again, she had her arm around his shoulders and they were laughing, and though they pulled apart immediately, without even having seen me, I knew something more than harmless flirtation was under way. Whether the relationship had advanced behind closed doors, I didn’t know, but I had the feeling it had not yet. If it had, I thought, wouldn’t they avoid being together at the house? Wouldn’t they look even more guilty?