We used to be what you might call friends before her father got sick. Not that I believe in the whole mothers-and-daughters-being-best-friends thing. That’s, frankly, unnatural. But I do miss her. The real Lila, the one who used to sit in my bed and talk my ear off. Do you know what a talker Lila really is?” “I do, actually,” Phoebe says. “God, as a little girl, she was even worse. Total stream of consciousness. Like living with a little Salinger novel. When she lost her teeth, I heard every gruesome detail. When she got her period, I was the first one she told. Besides her guidance counselor,
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