“It’s good for that sensitive stomach of yours.”
I had swallowed that tea, and that smile, every morning for years.
I had thanked her for it.
I had thought, more than once, how lucky I was — a woman who lost her mother young and got another one, a gentle one, who worried about my stomach.
That was the story I had been living inside.
My daughter had just, in nine quiet words, put a crack straight down the middle of it.