“There’s a button missing on your coat,” she said one afternoon, already opening her tin of sewing supplies and pulling out a needle.
“It’s fine.”
“Give it here.”
I handed her the coat. She sewed in silence, then frowned at 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 didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
But that was the moment when our relationship changed.
By the eighth Sunday, I stopped counting hours.
By the twelfth, I tried to push her money back across the table.
“Keep it,” she said. “We have a deal.”