She had not won.

He had simply moved the conversation to a table she wasn’t sitting at.

Evelyn Sterling, her mother-in-law, called her daughter.

She had done it from the second meeting.

She sent birthday cards with money in them.

She had come to the hospital on day two with a bag of magazines and a lemon cake and had sat by the bed for three hours holding Maya’s hand, and Maya — who had not had a mother since she was nine — had cried when she left.

Evelyn had asked, that afternoon, in the gentlest possible voice, whether Maya had ever thought about putting Mark on the deed. Just in case, sweetheart.