Then she did, and she walked the length of the cutting table with her hand on it the way Lottie had, the way I had, some instinct we all seemed to share about that table, and she looked at the wall of thread and the green chair and the tomato pincushion and the apron on its hook, and she said, “It still smells like her.” And I said, “It does.” We were both quiet.

And then, because I had learned something in three months of holding torn things under a good light until I understood how they wanted to be mended, I did not say any of the smooth, careful things Robin and I said to each other.

I said the true thing, the hard one, the one Franny had always said for us so that we never had to learn how.

I said, “I don’t know how to talk to you, Robin.