“Kiran listened. The mother-daughter conversation swirled around her — every woman contributing a fragment, a memory, a complaint, a tenderness — and she felt, for the first time, that Beena's absence was not the only mother-shaped story in the room. Every woman had a mother story. Every woman was navigating the distance between the mother she had and the mother she wanted, and the distance was different for each — shorter for some, infinite for others — but it was universal. Every daughter was an Elinor and a Marianne to her mother's silence and her mother's noise.”