Then one day I noticed that the conversation about reduced rent had simply stopped, and the rent itself had simply stopped, and yet the life upstairs had not contracted to reflect this change. If anything it had expanded. The patio furniture. The dinner parties. The weekend trips. Brooke’s Pilates membership and her standing blowout appointment and the small luxuries that had accreted around her life like barnacles.

Meanwhile, I was paying the property taxes. The water. The electricity. The heating oil. Because these bills were in my name, because the property was mine, because the alternative was having utilities shut off in my own home. At some point the utilities for both units had merged into a single arrangement, and I had never formally separated them, and now here we were.

I had watched this happen. I had let it happen. I had told myself I was being generous and flexible and understanding, and all of those things were true, and the other thing that was also true was that I had trained them to expect it. That was a harder thing to acknowledge, and I had avoided acknowledging it for years.

The photo on Friday evening made it impossible to avoid any longer.I made myself tea and settled into my armchair. I’m not the type to wallow. I lost my husband ten years ago, and I’ve learned to be friends with quiet.But then I opened Facebook.
The first thing I saw was a photo posted by Brooke’s mother. A long, lavish table at the best steakhouse in town. Brooke and Julian and her parents and her siblings, even two cousins, everyone laughing and raising glasses of expensive wine in a room full of good light and celebration.