That comes from the heart.

And it turns out that the heart is the only qualification for this work that has ever really mattered.”

Lupita’s earlier words stayed with Clara long after that morning: nobody has ever seen me like that.

Because they named a grief that Clara recognized, a grief with nothing to do with death, and everything to do with a lifetime of invisibility.

For sixteen years, Lupita had done her work faithfully and well, had shown up, had cleaned the rooms and carried the towels and offered, no doubt, a thousand small kindnesses that no one recorded, and in all that time, she had been, to the people around her, a function rather than a person, a maroon vest moving through hallways, present and unseen.