They were her.

They were the physical proof that I had been loved unconditionally once, by someone who wanted nothing from me but my company.

To hold them was to be, for a moment, the child on that porch again, safe.

And Ansel had looked me in the eyes, and watched me weep, and let me sell my grandmother off her own porch to make a rent deposit for the sister who came into my house and ate my food and called me beneath her.

That is why the dinner was survivable and this was not.

The dinner took a meal.