“She’s just faking it for attention. Old women always are.”

My husband said it without even looking up from his phone. He was casually cutting his steak with the heavy silver knife his mother had given us for our wedding.

I watched the grease shine on his chin, and I knew right then I was completely on my own. My stomach dropped, and I felt sick to my chest.

My seventy-five-year-old mother, Mary, had been sitting at the end of our dining table, her hand pressed flat against her ribs. She was a retired seamstress from Queens. She was the kind of woman who swept her porch with a high fever and watered her tomato plants before breakfast. She never complained. Never.

But for weeks now, she hadn’t been the same. She would eat two spoonfuls of her cabbage soup and push the plate away. Her skin had turned a dull, chalky gray. I knew something was terribly wrong, but Arthur, who spent his days adjusting claims for a commercial insurance company, had already decided she was a fraud.

To Arthur, everyone was a liability. He spent without blinking on his own hobbies, like the vintage watches he kept in a velvet-lined case in our bedroom, but my mother’s health was a waste of money. He looked at me with cold, flat eyes.

“She’s seventy-five, Linda,” he said, his voice incredibly calm. “At that age, everything hurts. I am not throwing our savings away on specialists just because she wants some company. You’re not moving a single dime from our account.”

I didn’t argue. I didn’t scream. I just swallowed my anger, adjusted my napkin, and nodded. I let him believe he had won.

The next morning, I waited until his sedan pulled out of the driveway.

My hands were shaking so badly I could barely grab the car keys from the hook. I hid the keys, my personal credit card, and my mother’s old insurance card inside a faded green reusable grocery bag that smelled like onions and old receipts. I stuffed it under some junk mail so he wouldn’t suspect a thing if he came back for a forgotten folder.

I drove straight to her tiny house on 34th Street. The place always smelled of laundry detergent and stale peppermint tea. I found her sitting in her old rocking chair, staring at the chipped porcelain sugar bowl she kept on her kitchen windowsill. It was her favorite thing, decorated with faded blue cornflowers.

“Let’s go for a ride, Mom,” I said.

She looked up at me, her eyes clouded with pain. “Linda, I don’t want to cause trouble with Arthur.”

“We’re going,” I said. She didn’t have the strength to argue.