We didn’t talk about the roof again. We didn’t talk about the man or the fraud or the permits. We talked about the garden, and how the hydrangeas were looking a little dry, and about the neighbor’s cat that kept digging up her prize tulips. It was a normal afternoon, but the silence between us felt different now. It felt like we were finally acknowledging the gap that had been there for years.

I know I can’t protect her from everything. I know there will be other men in other trucks, and there will be other scams that sound just a little bit too sweet. But as the sun started to dip below the fence line, I made a promise to myself. I wasn’t just going to be the inspector anymore. I was going to be the daughter.

“I’ll come by on Saturdays,” I said, and she smiled, really smiled, for the first time all day.

“That would be lovely,” she said.

It cost us both something. It cost me the comfort of thinking she was still the woman who could handle everything, and it cost her the illusion that the world was still as kind as she wanted it to be. We sat there until the kitchen went dark, just two women trying to find our way back to each other, one cup of tea at a time.