“Have you eaten?” she asked.

“I have.”

“You haven’t.” She leaned over to the little drawer in her side table and got out a cookie in a napkin — the kind they hand out with the afternoon coffee — and pressed it into my hand and closed my fingers around it.

“Eat that.

You were always the one who ate.”

I want to describe what that did to me, and I don’t think I can do it properly, so I’ll just report it.