About how there was a particular tea, ginger and something else, that helped a little on the days when the nausea was unbearable, and how she had learned to read my mother’s face well enough to know when to bring it without being asked.

All of this had been happening under my own roof.

In my own house, in rooms I paid a fortune to maintain, my mother had been living an entire secret life of fear and comfort and small kindnesses, and I had known nothing about any of it, because I had never once stayed long enough to find out.

A stranger I had hired to scrub my floors knew my dying mother better than I did.

I sat with that fact, and it did not get easier the longer I sat.