“‘You Are My Sunshine.’ Badly.”
“Important detail.”
“Very badly.”
I smiled.
Harlan did too.
“I was standing where you are,” he continued. “And for the first time, I understood what my mother had been trying to preserve.”
“The building?”
“No.”
He looked around.
“The possibility.”
That stayed with me.
Behind us, the audience applauded as another performer finished.
I touched Eleanor’s letter.
“Your mother was right about something.”
“Only one thing?”
“She was right that you needed help.”
Harlan gave me a tired look.
“I walked directly into that.”
“Yes.”
“Are you ever going to stop reminding me?”
“Probably not.”
He nodded toward the mural.
“Your mother wouldn’t either.”
The thought no longer hurt the way it once would have.
That was another thing I had learned.
Grief does not always become smaller.
Sometimes your life becomes larger around it.
There were still days I wanted my mother.
