Milly poured herself a coffee. “Thespian or not, Zoe, you need to hurry up or we’ll be late for school.”

“Maybe I’ll join you for your run on the weekend,” Zoe said. “Oh wait, I can’t. It’s my weekend to go to Dad’s.”

Nicole glanced at her friend. She knew how difficult she found those weekends, but nothing showed in Milly’s face as she reached into the fridge and pulled out more berries.

“You can join us the weekend after. If you can keep up.”

Nicole felt admiration and the same pang of envy she often felt when she watched Milly with Zoe. In her opinion, they had the perfect mother–daughter relationship.

Zoe vanished to get ready for school, and Milly handed Nicole a bowl of berries.

“Well, you can definitely stop worrying about whether you’ll be a good mother or not. You’re going to be brilliant. Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For getting her to talk about it. For handling it all so well. I told you that you’d be an amazing mother, and you just proved it.”

“She’s a teenager, not a baby. It’s different.”

Milly laughed. “Babies are much easier than teenagers. Or perhaps I should say it’s a different type of stress. One is physically exhausting, and the other is mentally exhausting. As you will discover. Anyway, thanks.”

Nicole felt a little better. Maybe she wasn’t going to be such an awful mother. Maybe there was hope. “You’re welcome.”

Milly added yogurt to her berries, but this time she didn’t bother reaching for honey. “I can’t believe Zoe and Cally aren’t talking to each other. I feel sick for her.”

Nicole had only recently learned that was a thing: feeling your child’s emotions as if they were your own. If Zoe was worried, Milly worried. If Zoe was in pain, Milly was in pain. It was as if the two of them were invisibly connected.

She wondered sometimes why that connection had been missing for her mother. There had been so many times during her childhood when she’d been in pain and she was sure her mother hadn’t felt a thing.

But it was obvious to her that Milly felt everything.

Over the past couple of weeks Nicole had watched Milly and Zoe together and studied their interactions.