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“don’t you think?” even though it was clear that she had already made up her mind.
    I plopped down on my knees. Claire pulled a dishrag from her purse, poured some water on it, and rubbed at the top of Mom’s headstone, pulling away cobwebs, dirt, and grime that had accumulated since the last time we’d visited. When was that? I wondered. Did we really not come at Christmas?
    “When were we here last?” I asked.
    Claire looked up from the headstone, made a visor with her hand, and said, “I came at Christmas, but I don’t think you did.”
    “You don’t think?” I said.
    “Okay, I know you didn’t.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me that you were coming?”
    “I did tell you,” Claire said. At once, I remembered when Claire had called and how I’d been huddled in bed following another disappointing month.
    “So I just came alone.” Claire went back to rubbing the headstone, scraping at a patch of moss.
    “Real nice, Claire.” I threw the words like daggers, but they might as well have been made of rubber the way they bounced right off of her.
    “Whatever,” Claire said. “We’re here together now. So start digging.”
    “Remember how Mom was at Christmas?” I asked, a warm memory sliding through me like a sip of hot cocoa.
    “You mean all of the presents?” Claire smiled, her face opening, bringing to mind Maura’s innocence—allowing me for a split second to see my sister as a child, before the stress of adulthood claimed her much too soon.
    “She went nuts,” I said.
    “You couldn’t get anywhere near the tree. And she was just as excited as we were. She’d swear that we’d have to wait until Christmas, then as it got closer, she’d start with, ‘Okay, just one!’By Christmas Eve, we’d have at least a dozen presents already opened.”
    “Do you remember Christmas Eve dinner?”
    “Yeah, of course. We’d always go to that little French bistro.”
    “That was after Mom died,” I corrected. “That’s where you and I went. I’m talking about when we were younger, still a family. It was Chinese food every year! I hated it, remember?”
    “Oh, yeah.” Claire nodded, remembering. “So Dad would run into McDonald’s and get you a cheeseburger beforehand.”
    “And a box of cookies that Mom let me eat during midnight Mass, remember?”
    “She would have never let you eat cookies in Mass,” Claire said. “You must have put them in your pocket like a little sneak.”
    I stared out over the treetops, dug my hands deep in my sweater pockets, and felt Mom’s hand wrapped around mine. “We were a pretty normal family back then, huh?”
    “It was a good childhood,” Claire said, willing to concede only so much. “But we don’t know what Mom was going through that whole time. She put on a happy face for us, but she couldn’t have been too happy inside.”
    I dug into the dirt. It was soft and crumbly, like a cupcake falling apart, completely unlike the red clay that I had to deal with in my yard. Did the cemetery put a soft layer of soil around the gravesites to make it easy for weary family members? I wondered whether that was mentioned in the brochures: Soft Soil! Easy to Plant!
    When we were finished, there were two neat clusters of daffodils on either side of the stone tablet, and the gigantic bouquet propped against Mom’s now clean headstone. Claire and I stood back and took stock.
    “We love you,” I said for the two of us.
    “Happy Mother’s Day,” Claire added.
    “And Happy Mother’s Day to you, Claire,” I said, giving her a hug.
    “And Happy Un-Mother’s Day to you, too, little sister,” Claire said. “I’ve got something for you.” Out of her purse, she pulled a neatly stacked bundle of letters, tied with a ribbon.
    “What are those?” I asked, even though I kind of knew already.
    “These were the letters you wrote to me while you were at school and traveling afterward.”
    “You saved them.” A chill ran down my arms.
    “They’re beautiful,