“She looks like me.”
I had to sit down.
Because she did.
Not fully.
Enough.
The same expression.
Same slightly crooked smile.
Genetics had carried something across generations I never knew existed.
That was the moment—not the soup, not the store—when I nearly lost whatever composure I had left.
Lorna had wanted children.
Life denied us that path.
Yet here, decades later, stood her sister’s granddaughter with her smile.
Not mine.
Hers.
I thought grief had taught me every shape loss could take.
Apparently it had not.
I cried.
Ellie looked alarmed.
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
“Should I get Mom?”
“She’s right there.”
Maeve came over.
For once she did not make a joke.
I said:
“Lorna would have loved you.”
Maeve’s face changed.
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Because she loved loudly.”
I looked at Ellie.
“She would have spoiled you beyond repair.”
Ellie smiled.
“Good.”
My health declined slowly, then quickly.
That is how these things often happen.
For three months, I remained active.
