“No need to apologize.” Patricia beams. Her burgundy lipstick matches today’s shawl. “Thank you for meeting me here.”

I look past her to take in our meeting location for the first time. I hadn’t thought much of the cemetery during the campus tour; it was common for old towns in former colony states like North Carolina to have historic graveyards in the middle of a modern development. I certainly hadn’t imagined I’d visit it during what was supposed to be a therapy appointment. “I did kinda wonder why you’d bring me here, not gonna lie.”

“I’d be worried if you hadn’t. No quizzes this time,” she says, tugging her shawl tighter. “I brought you here because I’ve decided that I’d like to help you, and I believe this is the best place to start.” Without waiting for my response, she starts toward the entrance of the cemetery, which is really just an open gap in the low wall.

“A graveyard?”

Her pace is surprisingly quick, considering how much shorter her legs are than mine. I have to take a few quick steps to catch up.

“Indeed.”

The sky is a bright Carolina blue overhead, and the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery, part green lawn, part wooded preserve, is probably the most beautiful graveyard ever. It feels like a hidden park, a respite away from the throngs of students bent over their phones on the way to class, professors chatting on the way to the campus coffee shop.

Bits and pieces from the campus tour come back to me as we walk: When UNC was founded in the late eighteenth century, it began with one building—my dorm, Old East. Only a few years after it opened, a student died unexpectedly and was buried on an empty tract of land not far from the then center of the campus. As the campus expanded, the university marked the perimeter of the cemetery with informational placards and a low rock wall built sometime in the early 1800s to separate it from the rest of the grounds.

“So this is how you’re going to help me understand my mother?”

Patricia huffs a bit as the path winds upward past an enormous crape myrtle. “I don’t know very much about your mother, Bree, so understanding is a tall order. But I know about root.”

“So the cemetery is where you’ll teach me about root?”

“It’s the starting point,” she repeats enigmatically. “The root of root, if you will.” She chuckles at her own joke, and I give up on pressing her.