He sat on the steps and motioned for me to sit again. “Now, this is a lovely place to sit and watch the park, isn’t it? All these years I’ve worked here and I’ve never done this.”

We sat in silence for a moment, watching two boys kick a soccer ball around the grassy area across the street. “So,” Micah asked, “to what do I owe the pleasure of another visit?”

I handed him the folded article. “My friend found this article and I was hoping you could tell me who the two men are in the photo.”

Micah stared at the photo and his lips moved soundlessly as he read the words below. He then folded it along the same lines and handed it back to me, shaking his head. “That’s me and Cotton.”

“Really?” I shook my head. “This is amazing. I still can’t figure out why she didn’t tell me about this.”

He twisted on the stairs to face me. “Don’t be sad, Ms. Ellie. It only matters what your mother did and how she helped change our town and our lives. Okay?”

Micah, I understood, was not a man to argue with. He patted my knee, and then we stood to face each other. “That was an amazing day,” he said. “Mr. Murphy didn’t ask us to leave. He was so damn nervous I thought he might have a heart attack, and when we left, he begged us not to return. And because he didn’t make us leave that day, we didn’t return another. And now …” He paused, staring up to the sky and shaking his head in wonder as if he could see something I couldn’t. And maybe he did. “Now my son’s and grandson’s pictures are on the walls in sports clippings. My daughter worked there her junior year in high school. We changed things. You understand?”

I nodded. “You did change things.”

“Anyone can,” he said, and hugged me good-bye. “Anyone at any time can change things if they care enough to do so.”

When the courthouse doors swished shut, I dialed Hutch’s cell phone. I wanted to tell him every word of that conversation with Micah. By the third ring, I realized that over the past few weeks, Hutch had been the first person I thought about calling or needing to talk to about anything and everything. Fear of heartbreak crawled over my chest—it had taken me years to stop making him the first person I reached for, and there I was, slipping so easily into it again.

But I didn’t hang up; I waited for his voice and then told him everything Micah had told me.

Excerpt from Lillian Ashford Eddington’s Journal
New Year’s Eve 1963
Twenty-three Years Old