I do not mean she was cured; some things are not cured.

But the crushing weight was gone, and with it went a kind of stress that I had not fully understood was making her worse.

Her color came back.

Her breathing eased.

The choking panic that used to come with every changing season loosened its grip.

Within months, the mother I thought I had been losing was sitting in a garden with a cup of tea and rosy cheeks, and it was Nora who had done it, Nora who had reached out of her own ending and lifted my mother back into her life.

Chapter 19 — The Garden