“There’s a button missing on your coat,” she said one afternoon, opening her sewing tin and taking out a needle.

“It’s fine.”

“Give it here.”

I handed her the coat. She sewed quietly, then noticed the small burn on my wrist.

“How’d you get that?”

“A fryer at work. It’s nothing.”

“It is not nothing.” She tied off the thread. “You flinch every time someone says the word mother. Did you know that? You’ve had a hard life, haven’t you, sweetheart?”

I couldn’t answer.

That was when our relationship changed.

By the eighth Sunday, I stopped counting the hours.

By the twelfth, I tried pushing her money back across the table.

“Keep it,” she said. “We have a deal.”

“Marianne.”

“Hush.”

One day, she slid her old tin sewing box toward me. Its lid was dented, and the painted roses had faded.

“You think I’ve lost my mind,” she said. “But one day, this box will save you.”