Maggie came on a Tuesday.
Ivy was ten days old. Lina had settled into a rhythm that was nothing like a rhythm — it was more like a series of negotiations with time, with sleep, with the particular demands of a person who had very clear opinions about the world and no vocabulary yet for expressing them except volume and the strategic deployment of eye contact.
She was managing. She was better than managing. She was tired in a way that went all the way down, and she was also, in some way that she was only beginning to understand, more present than she had been in either of her lives combined.
Maggie arrived with food and sat in the chair that had become her chair and held Ivy for twenty minutes while Lina ate with both hands, which had become an event of genuine significance.
"She has his eyebrows," Maggie said.
Lina looked up from her food.
"I'm not saying it's good or bad," Maggie said. "I'm saying it's true."
