"I'm hungry again," Paul whispered.
"I am, too," Flip whispered back.
"Are you hungry enough to do anything about it?"
"No."
"Me either." Then, after a moment, Paul whispered, "Flip—"
"What?"
"You remember your mother, don't you?"
"Yes," Flip said. She had started to say 'of course' but stopped herself because Paul didn't remember his mother.
"Tell me about your mother," Paul asked in a low voice.
"Well—" Flip paused. She still found it difficult to speak about her mother because it seemed to make an ache in her chest and she remembered how engulfing that ache had been when she got out of the hospital and came home, her knee still in a cast. When she was able to walk again she would go into her mother's closet and shut the door and lean against her mother's clothes and hold them to her and bury her face in them because they seemed to retain the lovely fragrance she always associated with her mother. And one day she went to the closet and all her mothers clothes were gone and the closet was empty and her grandmother came in and said,