I did not understand that she saw everything, and that she was not thanking the actor.

She was thanking the man.

I have wondered whether she chose that afternoon deliberately, whether some part of her knew her time was short and wanted to say it clearly, once, while the fog was gone and she could be certain I would understand it as her own true judgment and not a symptom of her confusion.

I will never know.

But I have chosen to believe that she meant it exactly as it landed, that in the one fully lucid hour she had left to give me, she spent it saying the single thing she most wanted me to carry forward: that whatever lie had brought me into her room, the person I had become inside it was good, and that she had seen him plainly, and that he was worth loving.