The same recipe.

The same mornings.

Handed down now through the woman he had spent his life protecting, to the granddaughter he had adored.

We did not try to recover the twenty-four years.

That was the first thing we both understood, without having to say it: those years were gone, and no amount of closeness now would fill them, and to spend the time we did have grieving the time we didn’t would be to lose it twice.

So we did not try to be the mother and daughter we would have been.