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.