“And the price of it — the deal we made — was that I could only watch you from far away.”

She had been there.

That was the part that undid me.

“I was at your high-school graduation, Cordelia.

I stood at the back of the church at your wedding.

I watched from across the street at your daughter’s christening.” Every milestone of my life, she had been somewhere in the crowd, a woman in a dark coat keeping her distance.