It had the phrase you prayed for a grandchild for four years in it, and it was true, and I did not use it, because I had a piece of paper on my phone with my own handwriting on it and it had taken the speech off me.

So instead I said: “Mom, I’m not going to shout at you and I’m not going to tell you it’s all right.

I want you to tell me why.

All of it, not the version.”

And my mother, to her credit, did.

It took about an hour and a half and she cried twice and I want to set it out properly, because it is the most honest thing she has ever said to me and because the reasons are worse than the ones people expect.

The first reason is the one everybody guesses and it is real.

She had spent eighteen months telling people that Carmen could not have children.

Her sister.

Two women at church.