I think about the days I spent believing I was pregnant last time—certain I could feel the cells gathering and taking shape inside me, that I could feel myself becoming softer, more glowing—and then it all turned out to have been a mirage.

“Kind of,” I say. “I mean, I think I understand what you’re feeling.”

“Do you think she’ll want me to call her Grandma?” he says. “You know—Mom’s…mom?” I can almost feel his brain pulsing at the weirdness of it all.

“She’ll probably want you to call her whatever you feel like calling her,” I say.

Sam makes a noncommittal sound, then opens a second croissant and starts dismantling it like the first one.

“Do you think that she regrets it now?” he says. “Giving Mom away?”

I take a long hit of coffee. Sam definitely knows how to ask a tough question.

“It can be very hard to know what other people really feel about their lives, Sam,” I say. “And we can’t always ask. But I’m going to guess and say she probably has some mixed feelings about it.”

Sam makes a face.

“‘Mixed feelings.’ Adults always say that. Don’t you ever just have feelings?”

Despite myself I smile a little. This exasperation is an oddly endearing side of him, and there’s something so teenage about it. I guess I remember feeling that too at his age: that adults were always equivocating, never committing to something 100 percent.

“I think the older we get the more we have mixed feelings about things. Especially complicated things.”

Sam shrugs, and demolishes the last of his croissant.

“Still hungry?” I say.

He nods.

“Hi, you two,” a voice says. I turn around to see Abigail walking towards us.

“Hi, Mom,” Sam answers as Abigail sits down beside me.

“Sorry I slept late,” she says, and glances at me. “I haven’t been sleeping so well recently.” I can believe it—in the morning light I can see the tiredness etched in her face.

“Oliver’s coming today too,” Sam reports, and Abigail looks at me, eyebrows raised.

I hope this isn’t going to add to our problems.

I explain the situation to her as Sam goes back to the cereal bar, but she just nods.

“That makes sense.”

I glance at the clock hanging over the breakfast station.

“When are you leaving to visit Lorna?”

“Soon,” she says. “After breakfast.” She looks at me, clears her throat. “Do you…would you want to come?”

I feel the hairs on my neck rise.

“I…yes. If that’s okay?”

The second I say it I feel a pang of dread. What am I going to say to this woman? What if the whole thing just feels awkward and dismal?

“How—how is she?” I say, keeping my voice low so that it doesn’t travel to the breakfast bar. “I mean, how is she coping with all this?”