For two hours, my mother-in-law ran my husband like a drill sergeant.

She made him carry the laundry up the stairs. She made him strip our bed and put on fresh sheets, which meant bending over the mattress and tucking in the corners with a watermelon hanging off his front. She made him unload the dishwasher.

“Mom, I can’t reach the bottom rack!” he called from the kitchen.

Della sipped her coffee at the table. “Interesting.”

I sat on the couch with my feet up, eating one of her lemon cookies. I’m not proud of it, but I was smiling.

He tried to vacuum the living room and kept bumping the watermelon into the furniture. He tried to put on his own shoes and gave up after the second attempt, sitting on the bottom stair with his laces dangling.

“How do you do this?” he muttered.

“Slowly,” I said.

Then he went into the laundry room to move a load from the washer to the dryer. I heard something drop. I got up and looked through the doorway.

One of his socks had fallen behind the dryer. Right in the same spot as before.

Daniel stood there staring at it. He tried to bend. The watermelon stopped him. He tried to crouch. The cantaloupes swung forward and nearly knocked him off balance. He grabbed the edge of the dryer, breathing hard.

I waited for the joke. I waited for him to say something clever.

None came.

He just stood there, looking at that sock for a long time.

By lunchtime, his shirt was soaked through with sweat. He came into the kitchen, where Della had made sandwiches, and dropped into a chair with a groan.

“I’m taking this off,” he said. “I need a break.”

“So did she,” Della replied, not looking up from her plate.

Daniel looked at me. I could see he wanted me to say something. To tell him it was okay, he’d learned his lesson, he could stop.

I took another bite of my sandwich and kept eating.

That evening, after Della had gone home, Daniel barely spoke. He sat on the edge of the bed rubbing his lower back. There was a red mark across his stomach where the brace had pressed in.

“Two hours,” he said finally. “Just two hours.”

“I know.”

“You’ve been doing it for months.”

“Eight and a half,” I said.

He looked at me. Something moved in his face, and for a moment I let myself believe it had finally gotten through. That tomorrow would be different.

I went to sleep with my hand on my belly, hopeful for the first time in weeks.

The next morning proved how wrong I was.

A zipper woke me.

I opened my eyes to gray light coming through the blinds. Daniel’s side of the bed was empty. Through the open bedroom door, I could see him in the hallway, kneeling on the carpet beside two open suitcases.

My heart stopped.

I sat up too fast, and the baby kicked in protest. I swung my legs off the bed and gasped, gripping the mattress.

The suitcases were full of clothes. But they weren’t his. Floral blouses. Cardigans. A stack of framed photographs, one of them a picture of Daniel and his brothers as little boys on a beach, squinting into the sun.

“You’re leaving?” I asked. My voice came out thin.

Daniel looked up, startled. “What? No!”

“Then why are your mother’s things here?”

He stood up and smiled at me. Proud. Actually proud, like a kid bringing home a good report card.

“I figured everything out,” he said. “Mom’s moving in for a few months.”

I stared at him. “You did what?”

“Yesterday made me realize how much you have on your plate. So I called her last night after you fell asleep. She’s going to stay in the guest room until the baby’s a few months old.”

“And she’ll do what, exactly?”

“Cooking. Cleaning. She’ll help you with the baby. She raised three of us. She’s a pro.”

“And you?”

“I’ll focus on earning money.” He spread his hands. “Everybody wins.”

I felt something cold settle in my stomach, right next to the baby.

He hadn’t learned a thing. He’d spent two hours carrying a watermelon, stared at a sock he couldn’t reach, and his solution was to hire his sixty-three-year-old mother as an unpaid maid.

Then the guest bathroom door opened, and Della stepped out in her robe, her gray hair wrapped in a towel.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” she said.

“Della,” I said slowly. “You’re actually moving in?”

“That’s what Daniel asked me to do.”

“See?” Daniel said, beaming. “Problem solved.”

I looked at my husband. Then I looked at his mother. Della’s face was completely calm. Too calm.

“Daniel,” I said. “Could you give us a minute?”

“Sure. I’ll go check my emails.”

He kissed my cheek on his way past, like he’d just handed me a present. I listened to his footsteps go down the stairs and into the little office off the kitchen. I heard the door close.

Then I turned to Della.

“Yesterday meant nothing to him,” I said. My voice cracked.

Della took the towel off her head and smiled at me. Not a sad smile. A sly one.

“Oh, honey,” she said. “That’s exactly why I agreed to come.”

I blinked at her. “What?”

Della sat down on the edge of the guest bed and patted the spot beside her. I lowered myself down carefully.

“Did you really think I came here to be his housekeeper?” she asked.

“That’s what he expects.”

“I know what he expects.” She sighed. “He expects what his father expected. What I gave his father for thirty-one years.”

She was quiet for a moment, looking at the stack of photographs in the suitcase. She picked up one of them. A tall man with Daniel’s jaw, standing in front of a brick office building, wearing a suit.

“Frank thought earning money was enough,” she said. “He worked sixty-hour weeks. Missed birthdays. Missed school plays. Missed Nathan’s first steps because he was in Denver closing a deal. And I let him, because I thought that was what a good wife did.”

“I’m sorry, Della.”

“That’s not even the worst part.” She set the photo down. “Frank handled all the money. Every account. Every bill. I didn’t even know the password to our bank. When he had his heart attack, I was fifty-four years old, and I didn’t know how much was in our checking account.”

I didn’t say anything. I just took her hand.

“I found out afterward that he’d let his life insurance policy lapse,” she said. “Two years before he died. A $250,000 policy, gone, because he missed three payments during a bad stretch and was too proud to tell me. The mortgage was four months behind. There were letters from the bank in his desk drawer that he’d never opened.”

“Oh my God.”

“I nearly lost the house. I sat in a lawyer’s office for a year going through probate, because Frank never updated his will after the boys were born. I had to sell his car and cash out my own little 401(k) from the library to catch up the mortgage.” She squeezed my hand. “The boys never knew. I made sure of it. I told them Daddy took care of everything, because I wanted them to remember him well.”

“That’s why Daniel thinks providing is enough,” I said quietly.

“That’s why.” Della looked at me. “I wish I’d challenged Frank sooner. I won’t let Daniel make the same mistake.”

I felt tears burning. “Della, I already feel like a single mother. And this week I found out he put $3,200 on our credit card for a stroller and nursery furniture, just because Michael and Nathan have the same ones. What if he never changes?”

Della’s mouth tightened at the mention of the credit card. Then she pulled me into a hug.

“Then you’ll have a place with me,” she said. “With or without my son.”

“You’d really do that?”

“Of course. You’re family.” She leaned back and looked at me fiercely. “My house is paid off. The deed is in my name alone. I made sure of that after Frank. There are three bedrooms and nobody in them but me. You and that baby will always have a home.”

I thought about the garbage bag full of clothes. About Mrs. Ortiz’s car. About my grandmother’s house going to a cousin I’d never met because nobody had written anything down.

Nobody had ever said those words to me before. You’ll always have a home.

I wiped my face. Then I looked toward the hallway, toward the stairs, toward the little office where my husband was checking his emails, completely sure he’d solved everything.

And something occurred to me.

“Della,” I said slowly. “I think I have an idea.”

Her eyes brightened. “Will we need another watermelon?”

I laughed for the first time in weeks.

“No,” I said. “This time, I have something much better.”