The chicken was still on my plate when my son Bradley told a table full of children that my job was to raise his kids while he enjoyed his life. If I had a problem, he said, the door was right there. His wife stared down at her salad while the twins froze with their forks in the air. Only Juno, seventeen, kept looking at me. There was something almost proud in her expression. I quietly stood, told Bradley I was leaving, and said they could start paying their own bills. Then I folded my napkin and walked toward the cramped bedroom they had given me.

Four months earlier, I had owned a cream-colored house near Bellefonte, with basil growing behind the kitchen and the chair where I drank coffee after my husband died. Bradley called and said he needed me. I sold the house below its value because he promised the money would help the family get organized. Instead, I followed him from Pittsburgh to Charleston, collecting hotel tags from cities that never seemed to make sense. Now, as I reached for my suitcase, Juno suddenly appeared in the doorway holding a folder. She had been waiting to show me something…