Anyway

"There are so many things I'll never get to watch her experience, now." the mother said regretfully of her dead child. "So many things she'll never get to experience."

"Like what?" the pre-teen asked.

"Oh, lots of things. Like, her first kiss."

"Like she would really tell you about that." the pre-teen sniffed scornfully.

"She wouldn't." The mother smiled a strange kind of patient half-smile. "But you know. You know, anyway." She turned then, looking far, far out the window; as if the answer to some profound question lay somewhere beyond the darkening horizon, visible only to her.