My mother’s absence was a court order.

When my great-aunt in Dayton called at Christmas to say families should forgive, I could say *there’s a legal order in place* and hang up, and the sentence did all the work.

When I woke at three in the morning with the old ache — and I did, more often than I told Ben — I could put my hand on the fact of that order the way you put your hand on a wall in a dark hallway.

The paper was a decision I got to make exactly once.

On November fifteenth, it was going to become a decision I had to make every single day, forever, with nobody to blame it on.

June came around the table and slapped both palms on my knee, which is how she asks to be lifted, and I lifted her.