"Mom, you saw for yourself at lunch. Yvonne and I don't cook. You and Dad should really just eat out."

Cary snatched up my phone and practically shoved me toward the door, like I was carrying the plague.

Yvonne put on her gracious smile. "Cary, if Mom likes coming over to eat, just bring her by. I'll have to think about how to host her next time."

If I hadn't heard what she said moments ago, I would have believed she was a devoted daughter-in-law.

But now I knew the truth.

I had no idea what she was scheming for "next time."

The moment I stepped outside, my son turned to me with undisguised impatience.

"Mom, we agreed when I got married. Yvonne likes her privacy. Just the two of us."

"Can you please stop showing up unannounced?"

The elevator numbers climbed, floor by floor. His face was tight with irritation.

When he got married, his father and I had bought them their own apartment without being asked. We knew they'd want their space.

In three years, I had never once visited. Never eaten a single meal in their home.

This time, his father needed to be hospitalized in the city.

If my husband hadn't been craving the hand-pulled noodles only I could make, I never would have set foot in that kitchen.

Such a simple request. And in my daughter-in-law's eyes, it was an unbearable imposition.

"Mom, are you even listening? You're getting older. You need to respect boundaries."

Boundaries. That word again.

Three years of marriage, and he had never once come home to celebrate New Year's with us.

All in the name of those precious boundaries.

I looked at this son I had raised for twenty-seven years.

When I bought him a house, bought him a car, wired him money every month for living expenses, pulled strings to get jobs for both him and his wife—did he ever once think about boundaries then?

The elevator chimed and the doors slid open.

My son followed me in, radiating impatience with every step.

"Mom, did you hear me? Don't come to the house anymore. Yvonne doesn't like it."

I stared at this son of mine, a man whose entire world revolved around his wife. Just because his wife said she didn't like it, he was ready to cast me and his father aside like we were nothing.

"Fine."

That was all I could manage. My heart had gone cold.

"Come on, I'll drive you to the hospital."