Marianne had worked as a seamstress and designer and once owned her own store. She told me about gowns she’d made for senators’ wives and silk imported from Lyon. I listened and usually left with containers of soup tucked into my bag.

Soon, she began noticing things no one else ever had.

“There’s a button missing on your coat,” she said one afternoon, opening her sewing tin and taking out a needle.

“It’s fine.”

“Give it here.”

I handed her the coat. She sewed quietly, then noticed the small burn on my wrist.

“How’d you get that?”

“A fryer at work. It’s nothing.”

“It is not nothing.” She tied off the thread. “You flinch every time someone says the word mother. Did you know that? You’ve had a hard life, haven’t you, sweetheart?”

I couldn’t answer.

That was when our relationship changed.