“Yeah, it happened a long time ago, and you were just upset because of your dad and everything. Here.” She hands me a note card with her handwriting. I’m Maree and your best friend Tate is my dad and your mom lives here and your dad died. Im sorry.

I swallow hard, notice that there are note cards like this all over my apartment, on the refrigerator, scattered across the kitchen counter, on the end tables, taped to the front door.

“Ms. Claire?”

“Mhmmm?”

“So you know how we are the same ’cause both our moms left us?”

I did not know that. “Okay,” I say instead.

“Well, my mom is still gone, but yours is here.” She points to a card, this one with my handwriting, that tells me her mother is not in the picture.

“Okay.” I wonder where she’s going with this, worry it might be a conversation that’s too big for me.

“Well, if my mom lived here, I’d be hugging her all the time. But you never hug your mom.”

“Is that so?” So the girl knows my mom?

“Yeah.” She scoots over, settles herself so close to me that our arms touch, lays her head against my shoulder and yawns. “And she’s a really nice lady too. She makes me think of you, even.”

A memory of a night similar to this one rises up. It was a couple of days before my thirteenth birthday, and I was sick with a fever, huddled under blankets on the couch while snow hit the window, fluffy and wet. Mom had made me chicken noodle soup and then afterward sat next to me and pulled my head into her lap, ran her fingers absently through my hair. I lay very still, scared that if I moved she’d remember that her drink was on the counter just out of reach. She was soberish, I recall, and her attention was a soft, golden light that surrounded me like a spotlight, leaving all the bad in the shadows beyond the light. She was beautiful again, even if her stomach poofed over the tops of her jeans now and even if her skin was mottled and pale. In that moment I felt closer to her than I had for a while, pierced with longing and a childish belief that she could stop drinking and be my mom again. Foolishly, I thought I could be honest, speak what was in my heart.

You’re more sick than I am, Mom.

My words erased her smile, dimmed her eyes, and plunged the space around us into a cold blue light. Her hand had trembled, shaking the mug of tea violently until she set it on the table.

Why can’t you get better? I spoke in a stream that ended with a stifled sob. And when she looked at me, her face was red, as though my words had been a slap.