It is a particular kind of loneliness, to be invisible while fully present, to move through a place every day among people who look through you, and it is the loneliness of an enormous number of the people who make the comfortable world run, the cleaners and the cooks and the drivers and the aides, the ones whose labor is everywhere and whose faces are nowhere.

Lupita had lived inside that loneliness for sixteen years, and had not let it curdle her, had gone on being kind and decent, the best version of herself, without any evidence that anyone noticed.

And what Clara had given her, more than the promotion, more than the doubled salary, was the thing named in that trembling sentence: she had been seen.

A person of power had looked at the invisible woman and registered a full human being, with character and dignity and worth, and had said so, out loud, in front of everyone.