“Listen,” you said, “listen.” You put your hand on the upward jut of her shoulder. It quivered a little. She felt made of bones and bad eyewitness accounts. Her skin was warm through the cloth, which was warm from the sun. That was maybe the fourth Maura you’d ever gotten, and you were still astonished by the fact that she’d disappear sometime soon, sometime by the end of the day probably, and she’d go . . . wherever she went. Maybe she went nowhere, but she was there next to you then. “Listen,” you said. If you ever had a daughter, she might look like this.

“It’s going to be okay,” you said. Was that really all you could come up with? Was that the best you could do? But you didn’t have anything else. You couldn’t comfort this girl, and you weren’t sure you understood her any better than any adult understood any child. You only had the insufficiencies that you wanted to hear when you were fifteen, but that you wouldn’t’ve heard if someone said them. You are sure, at some point, your mother put her arms around your shoulders, rocked you against her chest, said, It’s going to be okay.

Maura bit her lip. You noticed, as she flicked her gaze upward, rolling her eyes without quite rolling her eyes, that the color of those eyes was lovely. The color of your eyes may, apparently, have always been lovely. Your self looked up at you like the wrong end of a joke. “Is that all?” she asked.

“Yes,” you had to admit. “Yes, that’s all.”

* * *

“This happened to me too.” That was what your mother said, the one time you yelled at her for the essays, which was after the one about your suicide attempt. You hadn’t yelled at your mother in years; it wasn’t productive. Knowing every action is documented, perhaps you have tried to restrain yourself to those you could account for. Yet you were crying on the phone, your hands were shaking, you were folding up the crumpled sheets that Maura had resigned to you after giving up trying to hang yourself with them. That’s what your mother said on the phone. “This happened to me too, Maura. You aren’t the only one this happened to.”

* * *

The last Maura of the collection arrives infant and squalling in your bed. You awake with her on your chest, like the warm bodily weight of a cat. You awake with her screaming in your ear. While you make your coffee, you rock her. And while you start the car, you sing to her. And you brush her little baby hair, so thin, so soft, out of her red baby face.