“Probably best Mama wasn’t at the grad. Not my finest moment.”

“The hell it wasn’t!” Peggy’s fists fly to her hips as she spins around to face me. “I was never so proud of you in your whole life as when you marched out of there with your head held high. You showed them. Talk about guts.”

“You were there?”

“Of course,” she says, a little indignant. “Your mother called and said they needed her hands at the hospital, and I couldn’t have you there with nobody in the crowd. Stood near the back though, so as not to embarrass you with the noise.”

“That hooting and hollering was you?”

“What did you think?”

“I thought some asshole was making fun of me.”

“No dear, some asshole was cheering you on.” She thumps over to the table where I’m sitting and plunks a cup of tea and a plate of squares down in front of me. “Here. Eat. You and that baby’ve got nothing to come and go on. It’s that fruit tea you like, and the squares have some ahh-gaahh-vee juice or whatever ya call it in them. If the dog would lick his arse to get the taste out of his mouth, blame Charlotte.”

She goes back to her cupboard scrubbing, moving with a surprising ease and grace that pushes her halo of gold and purple ripples out faster and further, until I can almost feel them gently nudging up against me.

“Peggy, did she really drive off that bridge on purpose because she was sick?”

“Everything happens for a reason,” Peggy says, the Javex water sloshing on the floor as she scrubs the fridge door with a cloth she forgot to wring out.

“That’s bullshit.”

“Not bullshit if the reason was she knew she was a goner, she didn’t want people to see her suffer and waste away, and she had insurance that would give you the money you’d need to buy the land, now is it?”

As she moves to trudge across the linoleum floor to tackle another cupboard, her foot slides on the careless puddle she made. Peggy would have landed flat on her arse if I hadn’t seen it coming, and moved close enough to catch her by the flailing arm, helping to steady her balance.

“Goddamn floors,” she grumbles. “Me with a cracked hip, that’s the last thing we need.”

“Peggy, will you do me a favour?” I say, going back to my tea as she goes back to her cleaning bender.

“No, probably not.” Her tone is quick and cold. But the unspoken warmth radiating from her — which I can see and now feel with an almost jarring clarity — says otherwise.

“I’m serious. I need you to promise me something. If I, say, get hit by a garbage truck or choke on Char’s shitty agave squares, or if the tumours start up again and —” I can’t quite bring myself to finish that thought, as I feel a breathtaking boot to the ribs courtesy the life inside of me. “Promise you’ll tell my stories.”