“I know what it is,” she went on, fast, the way you talk when you’ve rehearsed something in a car. “I know it’s love. That’s why I can’t say anything.

If it were anything else I could fight about it, but it’s love, and it’s owed love, and you’ve been carrying it since I was seven years old, and every day you put a bit more of it on the table and I have to eat all of it or I’m ungrateful.”

“Sabrina.”

“You called the pediatrician.”

“I asked one question—”

“You called a pediatrician about my daughter before you asked me.” She was not shouting. I almost wish she had been. “And I said nothing, because you were only trying to help, and because you’re the only person on earth who ever came looking for me.