Chloe was wiping her wet cheeks with the back of her hand.

“Mom,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry I ate the chicken.”

My heart did not break at that.

It had already broken.

What it did was harden, all the soft ruined pieces of it fusing into something new and cold and absolutely certain.

“Don’t ever apologize for being hungry,” I said again, and I would go on saying it to her, in one form or another, for years.

“Not to anyone.