“Maybe it would have helped us understand you.”

She wasn’t accusing me.

She was making room for a version of our history in which her mother had been a frightened girl instead of a permanently capable adult.

We stayed at the table late, talking about Mrs.

Avery, the copy shop, the snow that used to gather on the apartment windowsills, and how Lily could never sleep unless I hummed the same six bars of a song my own grandmother had taught me.

Finally Lily lifted the blue ribbon from the box.