My mother reached up and squeezed her hand.

“Stop talking to me like I’m five years old.”

Juliet laughed through her tears.

“You’re being terribly difficult, you know.”

And my mother smiled.

I had seen my mother smile many times in those eight months.

I had seen the brave, composed smile she gave the doctors, the reassuring one she gave me when I stopped in on my way out the door.

This was neither of those.