That, it turned out, was the exact opposite of the lesson Brenda had tried to teach her, which was that her mother’s memory was a burden and a source of pain best kept hidden.

Every one of those birthday adventures was a quiet argument against that lie, and after enough of them, Hannah stopped needing the argument at all, because she simply knew, in her body, that loving her mother and being happy were not in competition.

They never had been.

Some time later, an apology did come from Brenda, a long written one, sent through my attorney’s office, in which she admitted that her jealousy over Rebecca’s place in my heart had curdled into a resentment she had aimed, unforgivably, at a child who could not defend herself.

Hannah’s counselor read it first, and then we let Hannah decide, entirely on her own, whether she wanted to read it at all.