But one rainy afternoon she came home soaked, still clutching a bag of scrap she had collected. Grace said little at first, but later she found the milk tin. That night, when Emma woke to the sound of coughing, she saw her mother sitting upright on the bed holding the tin, eyes swollen red.
“What have you been doing, Emma?”
The girl began to cry. “I just want to save you.”
Grace pulled her close and cried openly in front of her for the first time. She told her daughter she had already tried to prepare herself for death. Emma shouted back with a child’s raw terror, “No. You can’t die. I don’t have a father. I only have you.”
The rain kept falling outside. Inside that little room, something fierce took root in the girl’s heart. She did not know how any of it would end. She only knew she would keep going.