nothing.” She tied off the thread. “You flinch every time someone says the word mother. Did you know that? You’ve had a hard life, haven’t you, sweetheart?”
I couldn’t answer.
That was when our relationship changed.
By the eighth Sunday, I stopped counting the hours.
By the twelfth, I tried pushing her money back across the table.
“Keep it,” she said. “We have a deal.”
“Marianne.”
“Hush.”
One day, she slid her old tin sewing box toward me. Its lid was dented, and the painted roses had faded.
“You think
