I didn’t ask.

Lauren had given me something precious without promising that it would become permanent.

She also told me what the past six years had been like.

She described giving birth during a winter storm, her sister driving from Charleston because the hired overnight help canceled, and the way the hospital room seemed to fill with four tiny cries at once.

She explained the exhausting first year in which every bottle, every fever, every school form, and every financial decision had belonged to her alone.

She had built her design practice during naps, balancing invoices on the corner of a kitchen counter while one baby slept against her shoulder.