To the south, I can almost convince myself I can see my own home beyond where the cookie-cutter subdivisions give way to verdant fields. I lean over the edge, trying to catch a glimpse. Glenn puts his arm across me exactly the way Mom used to in the car, making a human seat belt when she’d slam the brakes.

“Sara and I used to hike up here,” Glenn says, gazing out. “Funny how I thought of it as our spot. Like we owned it. Now she’s gone, and these hills are still here.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small black hunk. I recognize the shape of it immediately.

“Joining a handbell choir?” I say.

Glenn transfers Mom’s bell slowly to me with two hands like it could crumble to dust if we breathe wrong. The metal is cold like it always was, but the surface is a dusky black instead of shiny bronze.

The clacker thuds against the inside when I shake it. The sound is different from before—deeper—but I’m always surprised it still chimes at all.

“Do you know how this handbell survived?” Glenn says.

“If you’re gonna say a miracle, I’m walking down this mountain alone.”

Glenn takes the bell back.

“It survived because copper has a high melting point.” He turns the bell over, tracing the pad of his finger along the blackened, bowed side. “The tin isn’t immune to fire, though, so it looks a little different.”

I bristle.

“I get it. I’m the bell. I’m ugly but still here. Yay, survival!” I fist-pump into the air.

Glenn rests the charbroiled chunk of my mother’s memory on his flattened palm, totally ignoring my sarcasm.

“You’re not ugly,” he says, still examining the bell. “And you are not your body.”

Glenn means well, but he sounds like he’s reading directly from The Big Book of Lies to Tell Burned People. I am every bit my body. We’re kind of a package deal. Okay, maybe more like a hostage situation, but still—inseparable.

“Why do you keep this bell on your dresser if you think it’s so hideous?” he asks.

The bell is so small in Glenn’s hand. It doesn’t look like it could produce the rich tones I remember reverberating through the church at Christmastime when Mom performed with the handbell choir.

“It was Mom’s,” I say, surprised by the lump in my throat. “It’s all I have of her.”

Glenn smiles, holding it up in the slanted evening light. “I can still picture your mother in those ridiculous white gloves up there in that church ringing these damned bells she loved so much.”

Glenn pauses like he’s searching for words.

“Just think how much more she loved you.” He holds the blackened bell between us. “You are the part of her that survived. And now, you’re part of us.”