I sat beside her and put my arm around her shoulders, and she leaned her head against my chest, smelling of lavender and warm wool.

“Do you remember,” she asked softly, “what you told me the night before your first visit to St.

Jude’s?” I did.

“I told you I was going to fix things,” I said.

“No matter what it took.” “You fixed everything, Julian,” she murmured, and pressed a kiss to my cheek.

I looked up at the bright evening star hanging clear above the oaks, and I thought about Nora, and I let myself believe, the way she would have wanted me to, that she was somewhere warm and comfortable and unafraid, wrapped in a soft blanket, watching the two of us in our garden and knowing that her one last request had gathered up two broken lives and carried them, gently and permanently, all the way home.

I go out to that garden most evenings now, when the work of the day is done and my mother has gone in to rest, and I sit for a while under the gazebo with a cup of coffee and I think about her, and about Nora, and about the strange and merciful shape my life turned out to have.