"That was my daughter Meredith." We took a while to calm down, especially me, but now we're sitting down as Mathilde instructed. Through a cup of tea, Mathilde decided to tell me more about what just happened. Having added two spoons of sugar to her tea, Mathilde adds. "We've never been very close, as you can see."

"Hard not to notice." I push a tray with her favorite cookies closer to her.

"You're not asking anything." That's pretty much an invitation, and too juicy to ignore, but I don't feel like pulling her strings. There must be a good reason why she kept Meredith a secret for so long.

"That's something you obviously don't want to talk about, Mathilde."

"That's probably true." Her usual bad mood is sewed tightly in her words. "Meredith was always daddy's girl, and she was still young when that damned heart attack took my husband's life. The only way she found to deal with it was to blame me."

Shame washes over me because I can relate to that. I had nobody to blame when Grandma died, so I took it all against the world.

Mathilde sips on her tea, and takes a cookie, but doesn't take a bite. She continues her story.

"It was impossible for me to deal with her anger and my own sadness at the same time. So what I did, and this is on me, was to shut myself in, leaving her out of the frame."

Watching her pained face I realize that guilt has been gnawing on her conscience for too long. I hold her hand, squeezing it the same way she did when she offered me the guest room.

"We all make mistakes, Mathilde." I tell her, but somehow I can't picture myself casting my child away. Anyway, Meredith shouldn't have blamed her mother for her father's death. It's not like Mathilde pushed her husband off a cliff.

"Things escalated quickly when she grew older. She was waiting for me to tell her what to do so she could do the opposite. Going to places she wasn't allowed to, smoking, coming home whenever she wanted, most times drunk, quitting school and overall becoming a major headache. Then she met that guy, Oswald. He's a drug dealer, someone who's probably involved in some even darker shit." She takes off her glasses and rubs the bridge of her nose. "I told her she'd be dead to me if she married that man, but she did it anyway; so in the end things ended the way they did. She never listened to a damn word I say, so I'm not surprised."

What a bunch of nonsense. There's nothing I can say on Meredith's defense. I could try thinking that Mathilde was probably a very strict mother, but that doesn't mean she could marry a criminal.

"Why would she even do that?"

"Two things: one of them was his money. Marrying a worthless dealer is a dangerous business, but he's wealthy enough to cover all her whims. The other reason was just because I forbid it."

"Wow. Sounds like a whiny brat to me. No offense."

"None taken. That's pretty much the nicest thing you can say about the little bitch." Taking a bite on her cookie, she gives me a look; and with just that, the ball is on my field. "What was that about you never meeting your mother?"

"I don't really know." Did I manage to make that sound neutral enough? "My mother died giving birth to me. I lived with my grandmother, but she died when I was five. I've been in three different foster homes since that. Only in the second one I felt loved and welcome, but I got in trouble and got kicked out." I can feel the anger building under my skin, my pursed lips and clenched teeth. I take a deep breath trying to calm down, but it's no use. "I walked out of my third foster home when I turned eighteen. Soon I met Jeanne's father, and the rest you already know."

"You had such a rough life, Cynthia. I feel sorry for you now."

"You don't have to be."

"Yeah." She takes a bite of her cookie, downs it with a sip of tea. "To be honest, I'm not a big fan of that kind of sympathy either."

"I didn't mean that."

"I'm just thinking out loud, dear." She lifts her glasses and massages the bridge of her nose in her particular exasperated way. "This world is one big bunch of nonsense."

"What do you mean?"

"Look at us!" Throwing her arms in disgust, she raises her voice. "You're a girl without a mother, and I'm mother to some worthless daughter."

"When you put it that way, this world is really a big bunch of nonsense, that's true." I reply, sipping on my tea. A smile finds my lips, and I wink at her. "But the pieces click together, don't they?"

She smirks, like we're sharing a secret.

"You even gave me a gorgeous granddaughter."

We finish our tea in silence. Even among all the nonsense, some things still work for the best in the end.