I pressed my face into her shoulder, soaking her blouse with my stupid, useless tears. “Why can’t you just stay! She might not even be alive when you get there!” She smoothed my hair with her hand and pressed her lips against my forehead. “Because she’s my mother,” she said. “I want to say goodbye to her. I’m afraid it might be my only chance, and it would hurt me forever to miss it. The way you love me is exactly the way I love her.” That made sense to me, of course. But it also defeated me, because the love I felt in that moment was as terrifying and hungry as any starved dog. It left no
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