Birdie picked up our plates, but Sadie intervened, clearing and washing the silverware, then dropping it in the dishwasher while listing the activities I could participate in in Bayside after she left that morning. Then she turned to me. “You’ll be okay.”

“Of course I will. What with all the multiple activities you just told me I could do here … .”

She smiled that cute, closemouthed smile she’s always had—the one where she is trying not to smile, but it wants to break through anyway. “You’re making fun of me,” she said.

“Never,” I said. I looked to Birdie, my heart near my throat. “Do you mind if I ask you a couple questions about Mother?”

“Isn’t that why you’re here?” Birdie’s laugh filled the bubble of silence, and she leaned against the counter, her hands behind her back holding the counter, her smile wide, as if whatever question I had would be received into that grin.

“I don’t know how to do it or where to start.”

“Just start like you did that time you were afraid to jump off the high dive in second grade.” Ms. Birdie lifted one hand in the air, a movement of blessing.

“Yeah, well, Sadie pushed me. I didn’t exactly jump.”

“Precisely.”

“Well, I found Mother’s journal. In it she would summarize her year—no real details of names or exact dates, just a summary of the year that had passed with her goals for the next year. She believed if she wrote her wishes down, they would all come true. And oddly and terribly, most of them did come to pass. But one. Except for one.”

“Him,” Birdie said.

“Yes. Who is it?”

Birdie looked away. “Him.” She sighed and turned to the window, staring out at the bay for the longest time in an emptiness that held the answer I wanted and needed. When she did turn back to me, her smile was gone, her face closed and placid. “Don’t go there, Ellie. It’s not important anymore. It’s something that she went through a long, long time ago. She reconciled it into her life and moved on. I can tell you whatever you want to know about the activities we did that summer, our help with civil rights, but not Him. I won’t talk about Him. Why didn’t she burn that journal?”

“I think she meant to hide it or put it away. But, Birdie, the life she wrote and the life she lived were two different things. The life she lived was one of organized perfection, but the life she wrote was one of brokenness and heartache.”

“I’ll tell you the story of that summer, but not His name. That’s not fair to Him or to your father.”

“I read some of what happened … but it was a summary more about her broken heart than the circumstances.”