I don’t move for a moment, just look at her. I’m having trouble recognizing this stranger as the same person who tortured me enough that I bolted from home as a girl; the one who gave me no choice but to strike out on my own as soon as I could. She traces the pattern of the flowers with her sharp nail and sighs. Should I feel sorry for her? She’s remained my father’s wife, taken care of him. Presumably loved him in some way. She doesn’t look at me, doesn’t tell me anything, and I don’t know if she’s expecting me to ask her questions or if she is so absorbed in her thoughts that she’s forgotten I’m standing here. I look at Adele and see her as she really is, an old woman facing widowhood. The upright posture and the Wicked Witch of the West scrawniness have melted into a dowager’s hump and a midriff roundness. Her hair is the yellowy white of faded blondes and the skin on her hands looks like paper that’s been crumpled and then flattened. I try to think how old she is and am shocked to think that she’s at least seventy-five. She’s been a part of my life for over thirty years. I think that when I was a kid, I held out some hope that eventually she’d go away, or that my father would come to his senses and we’d go away.

Now she looks at me. “Well, are you going to stand there or are you going make us some lunch?”

I laugh out loud. The relief is amazing. She’s still Adele.

She directs my making of the tuna sandwiches from the amount of mayonnaise to the way I cut the sandwiches. I ignore her and make it my way, lots of pepper. I plate the sandwiches, find an open bag of chips, and wrench open the antique avocado-colored refrigerator to hunt down something to drink. The first shelf is filled with some sort of protein drink, chocolate- or vanilla-flavored. Something intended to supply calories to a person with no appetite. I slam the door shut and fill two glasses with tap water.

How do you make small talk with someone who has always seen you as a burden, a pain in the neck, an unfortunate price to pay for happiness? Am I such an outcast that she can’t bring herself to talk to me? Then I wonder if it is simply hard for her to talk about my father, to tell me what’s been going on. She called me, called me here. But now she has nothing to say to me?

It’s up to me to get things started. “How long will he sleep?”

“I don’t know”

“Is he in pain?”