"That's all you had for them?"
She started crying.
I didn't reach for her.
"I saw Mary every time I looked at them," she said. "And all I could think was that she should be holding them."
"They're here."
"I know."
"Mary isn't. But they are."
"I know."
"You knew what your silence did to her."
Her mother nodded.
"And you left us alone anyway."
"Yes."
I wanted her to argue.
To give me something I could be angry at besides the truth.
Instead, she whispered, "Mary spent her childhood waiting for me to come back. And I've made her daughters wait for me, too."
I stood and walked to the sink.
The bottles were drying on a towel.
Four of them.
I remembered Mary teasing me about how organized I'd become during the pregnancy.
Now I wrote feeding times on scraps of paper.
On some nights, I couldn't remember which daughter I'd just fed.
"I thought you hated me," I said.
