“Is something wrong, ma’am?” I did not answer.

I took up a wet cloth and I began to wipe at her face, frantic now, clumsy, clearing away the years of dirt in desperate strokes, and beneath them emerged a face — worn, aged, exhausted, a face that the whole world would have walked past without a second glance.

But I was not the whole world.

I knew that face.

I stumbled to my vanity, and I pulled open the drawer, and I took out a small tarnished gold locket that I had kept locked away and had not opened in twenty years, and I snapped it open and held it up in front of her.