The first was pure maternal terror.

Part of me wanted to lunge across the table and stop her, to snatch the moment back, to protect her from whatever was about to happen, because that is what a mother’s body does, it throws itself between the child and the danger without asking questions.

But the second feeling, right underneath the terror, was something I can only call awe, and it was stronger.

Because I understood, watching her small fingers close around that box, that I was witnessing the exact opposite of everything Beatrice had spent three years trying to create.