![]() It was the way of things, Mia thought to herself, but how hard it was. Now, as a teenager, Pearl’s caresses had become rare-a peck on the cheek, a one-armed, half-hearted hug-and all the more precious because of that. Even when she had her own bed, she would often crawl into Mia’s in the middle of the night and burrow under the old patchwork quilt, and in the morning they would wake up tangled, Mia’s arm pinned beneath Pearl’s head, or Pearl’s legs thrown across Mia’s belly. As she got older, Pearl would still cling to her mother’s leg, then her waist, then her hand, as if there was something in her mother she needed to absorb through the skin. ![]() There’d scarcely been a moment in the day when they had not been pressed together. ![]() As a baby Pearl had clung to her she’d worn Pearl in a sling because whenever she’d set her down, Pearl would cry. “Parents, she thought, learned to survive touching their children less and less. ![]()
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