And from that night forward, though nothing about the work got any easier, something in me had changed.

I cared for her after that with a tenderness that surprised even me, as though her words had shown me the true size of what I was doing, and asked me, gently, to rise to it.

Chapter 6 — Small Tendernesses

After that night I stopped keeping any kind of ledger, even the private one we all keep without admitting it — the quiet accounting of what we give and what we are owed.

I gave, and I stopped counting, and something in me grew lighter for it.