One woman told Brielle, “Your mother talked about you girls all the time.”
Brielle waited until she walked away.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“You don’t have to decide what it makes you feel.”
At the cemetery, Taryn broke down.
She folded forward in her chair, crying so hard she could barely breathe.
I crouched beside her.
“I don’t even know why I’m crying,” she said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I barely knew her.”
“I know.”
Her hand tightened around mine.
“I miss her, but I also miss somebody who never existed.”
I understood exactly what she meant.
“You miss the mother you should have had.”
Taryn nodded.
“Is that stupid?”
“No.”
Her face crumpled again.
“You can grieve the woman who died and the mother you needed when you were six. They’re not exactly the same person.”
Brielle moved beside us and took her sister’s other hand.
