I had made it very clear that I couldn’t lend any money that month, because I still had to put all my money and emotional strength toward the surgery I was about to undergo, and I kept thinking my daughter-in-law would be understanding and stop there. But just a few minutes later, my phone lit up with a message from her, so cold that I was left stunned, unable to believe what had just appeared before my eyes.

She asked about my hip, the surgeon, Beverly, the train, the forsythia. We talked about our mother, about the year our father tried to build a deck and nearly lost a thumb to his own ambition, about my granddaughter’s missing front tooth and how children’s faces change overnight without asking permission of anyone. Only later, when the dishes were done and we were sitting on the porch watching the sky go from peach to indigo, did she say, quietly, “Do you think this is the first time you’ve seen them clearly, or the first time you’ve let yourself?”

I did not answer right away.

In the distance someone laughed from another porch. A screen door slapped shut. The air smelled faintly of wet earth and jasmine.

“The second one,” I said at last.

My sister nodded as though I had confirmed something she had always suspected and had kindly waited years for me to discover on my own.

The days in Savannah moved at a different pace than the ones I had left behind.