My husband be@t me for refusing to live with my mother-in-law. Then he calmly went to bed. The next morning, he handed me a luxury makeup kit and said, “My mother’s coming for lunch. Cover that up and smile.”

And he said: “My mother.”

And she asked: “And what did your mother mean by ‘the morning’?”

And he did not answer.

He looked up at the gallery, at Georgiana, for about three seconds. The way he used to look at her across a dinner table when he wanted to know what he was supposed to say.

And she looked straight ahead, at nothing, and did not help him.

It was the only time I have ever seen that woman refuse him anything.

Why I waited.

This is the part I have had to take, and it has taken most of the year.

The first time was in the April. I had the money. I had the trust. I had, from the May, a woman who had lived it telling me exactly what came next.

And I made a plan with a date on it, and the date was Friday — the Friday of the third week of August — and I kept to it, through two more times in July, because the transfer needed to clear and the order needed to be drafted and the bag needed to be packed and Friday was when he would be in Boston.

It was a good plan. Margit said it was a good plan.