And Joan wondered how she’d gotten here. This was not the life she’d seen for herself, caring for a baby.

Joan’s bright, sharp brain—her most beautiful muscle—turned to mush from too little sleep. Sometimes, unsure what else to do, Joan would take Frances out of the apartment, stare up at the night sky, and talk to her about the phases of the moon. Frances often cooed then. It was probably just the cool night air, but Joan also suspected that Frances was starting to focus, perhaps even taking in Joan’s finger, bright against a dark sky. Maybe this was who she could be to Frances. Maybe this was their language.

But that clarity was fleeting. The rest of the time, caring for Frances felt like trudging through mud up to the knees.

Still, as soon as Joan could, she did what Barbara asked and applied to transfer to Rice to be close to Barbara and Frances.

“I do not understand why it has to be you,” her mother said to Joan when Joan was accepted and began to plan her move. “Why it can’t be me? Why can’t I help with my own grandchild?”

Joan did not know how to say to her mother what they all already knew: Barbara had chosen Joan, and Barbara always got what she wanted.

Looking back on it, Joan could see that the universe had unfolded just as she had needed it to. It had given her something she had not even been smart enough to have wanted. Because those tiny moments with Frances—in the courtyard showing her a waxing gibbous moon, blowing bubbles and teaching her shapes, tickling her under her chin and making her laugh—came more and more often, each day. They grew longer, settled in deeper. Until one day, years ago, Joan took Frances to the playground and, as she watched Frances befriend another kid on the slide, realized that she could not envision a good week where she did not at least once get to brush her thumb against Frances’s soft, dewy cheeks. To tickle Frances’s chin—and hear that laugh—was to need it forever.

The night of their dinner, Frances looked up at Joan and smiled. She was six years old. Her light brown, shoulder-length hair was no longer baby fine. Her bright blue eyes picked up on more of what was going on around her than ever before. She’d stopped wearing Mary Janes and dresses last year. Now she wore corduroy pants and T-shirts most of the time. She’d begun using words Joan was surprised she knew, like “horrid” and “pivotal.” She did not have a “great” day but a “splendid” one; when she tasted a new food, it did not taste “bad” but “peculiar.” She’d already skipped a grade in school.