“What’s the point, Grandma?” My voice came out harder than I meant it.

“If no one’s even going to be there.

What is the actual point.”

Evelyn did not scold me, and she did not pour out the easy comfort I half wanted and would have hated.

She just set down her rattling teacup, and she reached up and took both of my hands in both of her small, trembling ones, and she held them, and she looked at me with those faded blue eyes that had watched over my whole life.

“Just get your diploma, sweetheart,” she said.