"... double-u, ex, wy and zed!" Ever since she learned the alphabet in school last Monday, Jeanne can't stop herself. "Mom, why is zed the last one?"

"I don't know, honey. One of them had to be, right?"

"Yeah, but it must be tough for poor zed to be always the last."

"Some people think that the best should be saved for the last."

"Like when you eat your veggies first and then you enjoy your hamburgers?"

"We're not having hamburgers again for dinner, Jeanne."

"I like hamburgers." She says sheepishly, giving me the puppy eyes. But all of a sudden her whole face darkens a few shades. "It's what we had for lunch the day I met Granny. Hamburgers and salad."

Is this why she wants to eat hamburgers all the time? Since she looks willing to talk about it for a change, I follow her lead.

"And coffee with cream later, right?" I try a smile at her, and her face lights up again.

"Yes. And then we would play cards in her bed."

This is news for me.

"I thought you were taking naps!"

"We were supposed to sleep, but it used to get so boring that we played cards instead."

Who knows what else these girls hid from me. Mathilde was pretty much my last foster mom, but most of the time it used to feel as if I was her mother instead. I will never forget all she did for me, and also for Jeanne. She was the light when my whole life was turning its darkest. She even opened her door for me when I was evicted from my own house.

Even after her death, she still made sure we had a good life.

All that talk about her will and leaving everything to Goodwill? Turned out to be all lies. She set a trust fund for Jeanne's college. Probably more than she will need. For me, she left her house, and a bank account with more money than I ever knew she had.

You're probably wondering about Ian. I finally accepted his proposal, and we're getting married in two months, on one condition: we'll live here at Mathilde's house. Aside from the very short time we had together, this is all I have left from her and I'm not going anywhere else.

But Ian being Ian, he's just fine with my conditions. He spends a few nights here every week, in hopes that Jeanne gets used soon to having her own room again. She's made crystal clear that she'll be all right. She moved Mathilde's rocking chair to her room, and sometimes she knits there. That's the only way in which she shows how much she misses Granny.

We all miss her a lot. Even Ian says often that the house feels empty without Mathilde.

Oh, Meredith. She deigned to show up, as you certainly guessed, the very day Mathilde's will was read. As you can imagine, I was very civil and didn't kick her sorry ass to Argentina. No, no. She was punished enough when she learned that everything she was giving for granted when her mother died, didn't end in her hands.

Like I told Mathilde once, the pieces click together. A motherless woman met a mother with a worthless child.

In the end, family are those we pick along the way. And if someone everneeds to ask, Mathilde was, is, and will ever be my mom.