The kitchen somehow felt colder than the January street outside our Cleveland home.

A handwritten note sat beneath the salt shaker on the counter, written in my mother’s familiar looping blue ink.

**“We took the savings for a cruise. Take care of Victor yourself. He smells.”**

For several seconds, I simply stared at it.

I honestly thought I had misunderstood.

Then I heard something scrape against the hallway wall.

“Victor?”

I hurried toward the bathroom.

My stepfather was sitting on the floor, barely dressed and visibly exhausted. He had undergone spinal surgery only two days earlier and clearly wasn’t supposed to be managing alone.

His hands were shaking so badly that he could barely pull a towel around himself.

Beside him sat the prescription bottle he had received after surgery.