“My mother never met you. She never had the pleasure of being a grandmother.”

“No.”

“Never is an awful word, Eve. I hate that word.”

“Me too,” I said.

“It’s a great pleasure, you know, being a grandmother.”

“Yes,” I said. “I was looking forward to it.” My grandmother had been bedridden for a year and died of a lung ailment she would no doubt have survived today. “It must have been terrible for you. Beyond terrible.”

“Oh, I had Aunt Jean.” That’s what she always said when the subject came up. “Aunt Jean was wonderful to me.”

“Yes. You said.” A vision of Maddy came to me, ten years old, in her sky-blue leotard, ponytail swinging to her unself-conscious twirls and jumps. At least she’d had me right to the end.

“I didn’t lose a child,” said my mother. “I never lost you. Or Chris. That would have been unendurable.”

The air was thin as mountaintop air. “I’ve endured it.”

“You astonish me,” said my mother. “How you’ve faced this. How you’ve survived.” She paused. “It just makes me sad you don’t have that comfort.”

“What comfort?”

“The comfort of faith.”

She had said this before in different ways. I was accustomed to indulging her. I had not minded taking Maddy to their church when she was small. I let her make what she would of the language and the imagery. Belief belonged to my childhood, after all, and I was grateful for the sense, so deeply part of me, that what we can see is not all there is. Through the nightmare of Maddy’s death, I had leaned on my mother and let myself be soothed by her devotional murmurings. What counted was the tone and the intention. If my mother was held up by God, she could hold me up. I did not care. I could not judge.

“It doesn’t matter,” said my mother hastily.

My heart was beating in my ears. “Maybe it does, Mom.”

“What I meant was, I wish that was something you and I could share.”

“I know you do,” I said. “Sorry.”

My mother only smiled a little, running her thumb and forefinger around the handle of her mug. “You were such a curious child, Eve. Always turning your head to see another side to things. ‘Open the curtains,’ you’d say. ‘The nighttime wants to come in.’ You found your father’s cap out in the rain. ‘Look! It’s Daddy’s old, dead hat!’ ”

“Maybe,” I said slowly, thinking of that sepia person in her shapeless dress, hair crimped into earmuffs, smiling the enigmatic smile of early death, “what gets pushed down comes up somewhere else.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t imagine losing your mother and having to pretend it’s in your best interest.”

“I’m not pretending.”

“Believe it’s in your best interest.”