I nod, welling up a little. “I need you, Mom. We all do.” I swipe at my eyes, and I don’t know if I’m more weepy because I love her so much and am so afraid of losing her, or if it’s more fear of hurting her when I tell her I took the first steps to try to find my biological family.

“You’re going to make me cry,” she says, and she’s right. Her eyes are damp already.

I try to smile at her. “Mom, I have to tell you something.”

Her expression changes quickly. “What is it, Zoe? Is something wrong?”

I shake my head. “No, everything’s okay. But . . .”

I take a breath, and then I launch into it. All of it. Through the baby shrimp salad and the crusty bread and the stuffed trout and a lot of iced tea, I tell her what happened with Sam. And about the DNA test. And about all my sorrows and anxious feelings about both.

Her reaction when she hears about Sam overwhelms me. She gets it. And even though her heart goes out to Sam, she doesn’t think it means I did anything wrong. It’s all too easy to see what we want to see, she says, and she’s so sorry for both of us, sorry that we both have to go through the pain of losing someone we loved. Her compassion at the fracture of such an important friendship means everything to me.

Amazingly, she is equally understanding about the DNA test.

“I’m glad you’re searching for your biological family,” she says. She pauses as the plates are cleared and dessert menus are delivered. “I know you’ve always wondered.” She smiles, but she looks like she might cry. “I hope whatever comes of it is good. I can’t bear the thought of your being disappointed. I’ve thought about this a lot, since the cancer. The idea that maybe you could find other family.” Her chin wobbles. “Maybe there’s someone out there who wants to know you, and who would love you. Maybe even your birth mother, who knows?”

I swallow against the lump in my throat. No one could ever take my mom’s place — the very notion is repugnant to me.

“I can’t bear the idea of not being here for you.” She shakes her head, then takes a sip of water. “But when things were worse, I thought about it. And I thought that maybe if I couldn’t beat the cancer, I would make sure you knew it was okay with me if you searched. I thought about her a lot — your birth mother. I mean, what would my life be without this woman? Without my Zoe? And I wished there were some way . . .” She pauses, shrugs. “Some way I could thank her.” Her voice breaks at the end.