“I don’t see why it’s so difficult for you,” her mother had said. She’d called to tell B. she was sending an embroidery kit. So that B. would know how to embroider for any occasion. “There’s an order to things,” she told B., “and I think it would help if you followed it.”
“I’d like to.” B. nodded into the receiver.
“You can, dear. Just try a little harder.”
“I will.”
But in the end B. could not bring herself to ask where this order began or how she had missed it or why it seemed to her mother so easy a thing to pick up.