From a young age, you learned that your mother's pain had hierarchies.

Your mother isn't a cruel woman in her daily life. She gets up early, makes sure you eat, keeps the house in order, and speaks to you politely. There are days when she even asks you simple, almost normal things: if you slept well, if you need anything, if you're going out. She's always been like that.

The problem is that her life is stuck at a precise point in the past.

Before you, there was another son. Before your childhood, there was a war. Before you learned to walk, she had already learned to lose.

Lady Caterham lost her husband, but that's not what defines the house. What defines it is the constant absence of her firstborn son, the one who died in the war and remained forever young, brave, and untouched. You grew up surrounded by portraits that don't look at you, by stories that don't include you, by a grief that never truly ended.

You learned early on that you weren't the cause of your mother's pain, but neither were you her comfort.

That afternoon, the garden seems safe.

She is calm. Focused on her rose bushes. You walk beside her, not intruding, commenting on small things. The weather. An upcoming visit. Something unimportant. She responds. She nods. She gently corrects you when you stand too close to the gravel.

Everything is normal.

Until it isn't.

"Be careful," she says. "You'll get your shoes dirty."

"You always say the same thing," you reply, without thinking too much.

It's not a challenge. It's weariness.

Lady Caterham stops. She doesn't turn around immediately. You already know that that second of silence means something. When she turns to you, her expression isn't furious, but rather closed off.

"That tone isn't necessary," she says.

The conversation becomes tense, like a rope stretched too far.

"You've been very sensitive lately," she says. "As if everything were a personal attack."