“The Civil Rights Memorial, and then we’ll hit the library and see what we can find in the archives. Also, I thought we’d go see the bus station—the Greyhound bus station where your mother would have gone that day of the beatings.” He pointed. “There’s the memorial.”

We moved toward it, and I absorbed its beauty the way one would a sunset or an opening flower. Water rose from the middle of a round black granite stone, flowing over names that were carved and radiated outward like many hands of a clock. The memorialized names were of those who had died defending civil rights. On a curved gray stone wall behind the table, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s paraphrase of a Bible verse was carved into the granite: “We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

“This is spectacular and … sad,” I said, shaking my head. “I just don’t understand why she never told me about any of this. It is so … important. It’s such a part of our lives now. I mean, we can try and forget it ever happened … but it did happen and it changed everything.”

“Ellie, if you’re trying to forget something or someone, the last thing you do is talk about it, especially to your kid.”

Standing then in front of the memorial, I dipped my hand in the flowing water, ran my finger over a single name. “But she could’ve at least told me about this … .”

“Maybe she just couldn’t separate this from him.”

“Maybe so,” I said.

The water sent a spray around Hutch’s face and I reached up, touched the scar on his left cheek. He placed his hand over mine and leaned into it and then just as quickly released my hand. “Let’s go to the bus station.”

“Just give me a minute,” I said, standing in front of the memorial. I began to whisper the names etched on the stone, names of people I’d never met, yet I still felt an odd and disconnected kinship.

Hutch sat on a marble bench and leaned back, closed his eyes, lifting his face to the sun. I stared at him for a few moments, allowing myself to drink in his face and body with the luxury of his closed eyes. I went to him and sat quietly. Without opening his eyes, he reached over and placed his hand on my leg.

My cell phone rang inside my bag, and in digging for it, I dropped my purse’s contents onto the ground. Out rolled lipstick, a wallet, loose change, two Sharpie pens, and some crumpled receipts. I fumbled for my phone and the paraphernalia. “Hello,” I said, not even looking at the screen for a name.

Hutch jumped up and ran after a rolling lipstick, and I laughed out loud.

“What’s so funny?” Rusty’s voice echoed through the line.