Two days after Grandma’s funeral, I was still in her kitchen. Then my brother texted: “”We’re in the Maldives. We can’t access Grandma’s account.”” I said nothing. Good thing I moved Grandma’s $235,000. He panicked when…

“Don’t wait up for us, Mom. We’ll be late.”

And then they were gone.

The house went so quiet it felt heavy. I walked through the living room, through the dining room with the glass table I polished every day, through the kitchen where I spent hours making meals nobody really thanked me for. Everything was spotless. Everything was in order. I was the only thing in that house nobody seemed to see.

I made myself instant soup, the cheap kind sold in packs. I did not sit in the dining room. The help does not eat in the dining room, right? That was what I was by then. The help. The help who had paid sixty-eight thousand dollars for the privilege of working for free.

At seven that evening, I opened Instagram. Maybe I needed proof of what I already knew.

The first photo was Emily in her red dress holding a glass of sparkling wine.

The second was my grandchildren with oversized plates of fried shrimp and fries.

The third was the whole table.

I counted nine people. Daniel. Emily. The children. Emily’s mother. Her sister. Her brother-in-law. Two friends I did not know.

Nine people laughing in a restaurant while I sat in a kitchen I helped pay for, eating soup from a paper sleeve.

Then the phone buzzed.