I remember the first time I saw the white flag waving... in her eyes, I mean. Not the surrender, not quite. More like a cease-fire declared by a distant command, leaving the ground troops — us — bewildered. She used to call my mother a "quick wit," a verbal marksman, always hitting the bullseye. Now, the silence when I offered her favorite apple pie, the one she taught me to crimp the crust just so... it was a different kind of quiet. A clinical absence, an anomia, really, where the familiar object becomes a foreign body. I just... I stood there, watching my own reflection in her blank gaze. And the tears, they weren't for her, not really. They were for the ghost of a laugh that wouldn’t come, the one I used to count on, like reveille.