I thought about my mother — my mother who had driven six hours to bring home a three-week-old baby and never once made me feel like anything other than completely, unconditionally hers.
I had two mothers.
Both of them had loved me in the fullest way they knew how.
One had raised me.
One had found me.
Both had given me more than I had known to ask for.
I stood up from the chair.
I picked up the small stack of books.
The blue cardigan.
The envelope with Eleanor’s name on the outside and my ring on the inside — no, on my hand now.
I said goodbye to Patricia at the door.
I walked down the corridor I had walked down a hundred times before, past the nurses’ station, past the small common room where Eleanor and I had once watched an old film on a portable screen because she said she had never seen it and I said I hadn’t either and we had both been lying.
