My son forgot to hang up, and I heard him call me a burden.
So while he and his wife were smiling their way through Italy and France, planning a future that already included my house, I quietly sold the £875,000 home his father and I spent thirty-two years paying off, packed everything without a word, and came back just in time to watch his key stop working in my front door.
The first thing I noticed was not his face.
It was the sound of metal scraping against metal.
Daniel had always been impatient with locks, drawers, traffic lights, queues, anything that suggested the world might not move when he wanted it to.
Now he stood on my front step with his airport jacket creased at the elbows, one hand gripping the handle of a hard-shell suitcase, the other pushing his silver key into a lock that had been changed three days earlier.
It would not turn.
Melissa stood beside him with two shopping bags hanging from her wrist and her sunglasses still on, though the sky was flat and grey and the pavement was wet from a late afternoon shower.
She was smiling at first.
That neat little smile she wore whenever she wanted a room to think she was calm, clever, and slightly above everyone in it.
Then Daniel tried the key again.
The smile faded.
He removed it, checked it, shoved it back in, and twisted harder.
