PART 3   I stared at the hospital bracelet in the lunchbox until the letters of my own name blurred.

fed people without humiliating them. She loved a broken man without handing him the power to break her child. She made mistakes. She kept secrets. But she also left a table big enough for the truth.”

Years later, when I finally had a daughter of my own, I named her Clara Grace.

When she was six, she asked about the framed photograph in our hallway.

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