Her mother stayed until nine p.m.
This was, Lina understood, an act of discipline — Mei Hart was not a woman who left easily when leaving felt wrong, and leaving clearly felt wrong, but she had looked at her daughter and her granddaughter in the quiet of the evening and understood, with the accuracy of someone who had once been a new mother herself, that what was needed now was not presence but permission.
She kissed Lina's forehead at the door. She touched Ivy's cheek with one finger.
"Call me," she said. "Any hour."
"I know."
"I mean it. Any hour, Lina."
"I know, Mum. Go."
She went. The room was quiet.
Lina looked at Ivy in the bassinet beside the bed. Ivy was asleep with the concentrated intensity of someone doing something they have decided to be excellent at. Her chest rose and fell. Her hands were curled loosely. The dark hair had dried and was now doing something independent and opinionated at the crown of her head.
Lina had been awake for twenty-one hours.
