I was under anesthesia when it wore off too early. I couldn’t open my eyes, but I heard my son’s wife tell the surgeon: “If something goes wrong, don’t call her lawyer. Call me first.”

Mom?”

I slowly turned my head toward him. “Machines. Voices. Heaven refusing to take me.”

Vanessa laughed too fast. “Still joking. That’s our Evelyn.”

Our Evelyn.

As if I belonged to them.

Over the next week, they moved into my home “to help with recovery.”

Vanessa fired my housekeeper of twenty-two years.

She replaced my nurse with someone she personally continue reading …