Alice hesitated, wondering how best to explain. Then she burst into tears. “Oh, dear.” Elspeth fished around in her pocket and handed her a handkerchief, oily and stained. Alice took it and mopped it around her eyes. She was horrified; the tears simply would not stop. She hadn’t meant to cry. She hadn’t even planned to feel sad. But just then it was like a switch flipped and that veneer of dazed indifference shattered, and all the grief she’d been carrying broke through the floodgates.
