For a moment, I felt something move inside me—not a kick, exactly, but a strange shifting sensation that made my breath catch.
I stepped backward and grabbed the sink.
“No,” I whispered. “That cannot be possible.”
I was seventy-nine years old.
I had not been intimate with a man since my husband died.
Yet a terrible, absurd thought had taken root in my mind. What if something extraordinary was happening to my body? What if the impossible had somehow become possible?
I felt ashamed even thinking about it.
I pulled my nightgown down, brushed my hair, and went to make tea.
By lunchtime, I had forgotten about the mirror.
Or so I told myself.
That evening, my eldest son, Michael, called to ask whether I would come to his house for Sunday dinner.
“Of course,” I replied.
“Are you sure? You sounded tired last time.”
“I’m seventy-nine, Michael. I’m allowed to sound tired.”
