About how my mother often could not sleep, how the fear came worst in the dark hours, how she would ring not for the nurse but for Juliet, because the nurse would come and check her vitals and adjust her medication and leave, and what my mother wanted was not to be checked but to be accompanied.

Juliet told me she had sat up with her through whole nights, not doing anything a nurse would log, just being a warm presence in the room so that my mother did not have to be afraid alone.

She told me about the hair.

About how my mother had wept, privately, over the hair she found on her pillow each morning, and how the two of them had finally decided together that it would be easier to choose the moment than to keep being ambushed by it, which was what I had walked in on.

She told me about the tea.