Sophie spends a half-hour in the room with my mother as we wait in the hall. Jake has asked me a dozen times if I’m sure about not going in, and I glare at him coldly. He clamps his mouth shut and looks away. His jaw tenses in agitation, but he leaves it alone.

He just doesn’t get it at all; he has no way of understanding my relationship with her when his mother is everything you could want in a parent: kind, caring, protective, and loyal. She would move mountains for her sons and ...