The sky was bright when we left Texas, and Poppy spent most of the first day counting license plates.

Evelyn brought the music box wrapped in a towel and packed it between her sweaters like something alive.

The house from our childhood was gone.

In its place stood a small municipal park with a walking path and three newly planted maples.

A historical marker described the flood that had altered the county decades earlier.

Mother was not named on it, but her story was written into that landscape all the same.

I stood beside the path trying to locate the front steps, the lilac hedge, the kitchen window where Mother had called us home.