She leaned forward and took my hands. “Don’t you know by now that most things in our life were not in our plans?”

I looked up at her. “Maybe that’s when things get the most screwy—when we try to make things go according to our plan when it’s better for it not to go.”

She smiled without answering. “But, yes, of course you can stay as long as you need. And no, you can’t pay rent. You’ll get through this. Here. Right here at my Summer House.”

“Thank you. More gratitude than I can possibly express.”

We sat in nature’s quiet. A breeze blew out the candle, and the buck moon was lucent. “Birdie,” I said, “Cotton and I were talking about how we’re all broken. All of us in different ways.” I leaned forward. “When your husband died or when anything didn’t turn out the way you wanted—what did you do with that brokenness? What do you do?”

“Look where I live, Ellie. I told you things happen at this Summer House. Hearts open; truth is revealed. I don’t know why. I think it’s because we’re on the Bay of the Holy Spirit. But I don’t need to know why … I just know.”

“How?”

“Instead of closing the cracked space tight, I allow grace to fill those places.”

I lifted my face to the breeze coming off the bay. “Thank you for letting me stay. What a gorgeous night.”

“The air feels like silk tonight. Smooth.”

Silky air. I’d heard this before, like a voice from childhood that could not be named. The wind whistled around the corner of the house, a loose shingle banged against the cedar shakes.

Jubilee.

Those were the notes and lyrics to a jubilee.

I jumped up from the chair. “A jubilee is coming, isn’t it?”

“Probably. You can never ever be sure; you can only feel the signs. You don’t know until it’s really here and the whistles blow and the little ones come hollering. First you feel. Then you know.”

“Sometimes,” I said, feeling the breeze and a deep shift inside my body, “you feel before you know.”

“Of course.”

The feeling first, and then the knowing. And sometimes also—the waiting.

I kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you, Ms. Birdie.” I walked out the door and back to the guesthouse to prepare. A jubilee: when all debts are forgiven and we are offered a new beginning.

I waited on the jubilee and spread out the poster board, which was still on the dining table, and I finished what I’d started—her timeline, filling in the blanks I now understood. Then I read Mother’s last entry one more time. I would never read the journal again after that. I let go of the need to know any more.