I nodded, and I was overcome with admiration for this man I’d just met, for this man who knew my mother when she was passionate and kind and full of hope. I stood and walked around the coffee table where he stood. I hugged him. “I forget,” I said, “that the movement was not that long ago, not just something in a history book. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me. I’m sorry to bother you. I’ll let you get back to work.”

He held my hands. “You’d never be a bother. Come by anytime.”

When I stepped into the sunlight, I pulled my sunglasses over my eyes, hiding the tears that had formed and were threatening to fall. I found a park bench facing the bay. The horizon shifted, moved, fading and coming into focus with every cloud’s movement. Maybe Birdie was right, maybe it didn’t matter whom Mother loved, only that she did. Maybe her love letters were never meant to be delivered. If she hadn’t given that last love letter to him, why would I? Why had she kept it?

Excerpt from Lillian Ashford Eddington’s Journal
New Year’s Eve 1962
Twenty-two Years Old

I am now Lillian Caulfield Ashford Eddington, wife of Redmond, mother of Lillian Caulfield Eddington. Ellie. Her name should translate “my heart” because that is what she is. My heart.

How could someone I didn’t know I needed be more than I ever needed?

I thought I knew what love was, but I never did. Not really at all. Love is not wanting and needing; it is knowing you would give your life for the other in a way that is absolute. It is knowing that there is not a day that will ever go by—for the rest of your life—when that person will not be on your mind or in your heart. That is Ellie.

So here I am again where the best and worst part of my year are the same. I think I like it better when they are two different things—when they are opposites. But this is the funny thing I am seeing—sometimes the best and worst things are the same things.

So Mrs. Prinkle asked me this question about being pregnant and I laughed at her. But she was serious. She asked me the last time I had a period and I had to think and think about it. When I realized how long it had been, I had this dizziness come over me. Not the kind of dizzy when you stand up too fast, but the kind that makes your entire body tingle and your head feel like it is floating off your body into space.

I knew.

Right then, right there, staring at Mrs. Prinkle’s black ribbon headband, I knew.

I’ve never known anything that fast.

Eighteen

Eighteen