My brother took my mother to the countryside for August – “let her have a break from the apartment building.” On Thursday, my mother called from a neighbor’s phone: she had run out of blood pressure medication, and “Wojtek couldn’t be bothered because he was angry.” I dropped the medication off on Friday. My mother was waiting at the gate with a bag.

Wojtek stood on the threshold. He didn’t approach or wave. He held a cup of coffee and looked at us. He looked like someone who wanted to apologize but didn’t know why.

“Call him next week,” Mom said as we pulled onto the main road. “He’s not angry. He’s alone.”

We drove through the fields, and Mom told me how Wojtek spent the first week taking her for walks, showing her the garden, explaining what he’d planted where. How in the second week he started going out in the evenings, coming home late, and feeling sleepy and irritable in the mornings. How in the third week he barely spoke to her.

“He couldn’t tell me he wanted me to stay longer, but in a different way,” Mom said, looking out the window at the passing villages. “And I couldn’t tell him I wanted to go home.”