She was watching the clouds move upon themselves. They were slow, and the sky was powder blue. The groves of grass and monstrous pines loomed overhead, but she couldn’t see them. Only sky.

It was always there, and bigger than everything that lives in the world.

She felt something in her hand. She turned to see a man lying beside her in the water. He was wearing a white linen suit that was ruined with creek mud. He was young. Handsome. And it occurred to her that he was holding her hand. This young man. This man in linen.

She turned her head to the other side. She saw a little girl, also lying beside her. The girl had a mane of copper that had turned dark with the flowing spring water. The girl stared at the sky with her eyes wide open.

The girl grinned and met Marigold’s eyes. “Did you worry about me?” said the girl.

“I worried about you every second of every day,” said Marigold.

Then Marigold was yanked from her dream and found herself in a bed in a dark room. The walls were covered with mermaid wallpaper. Her child, Maggie, was beside her. An adult woman.

Earlier that night they had talked and cried until they’d fallen asleep here. They had shed enough tears to make a creek of their own.

Marigold had tried to fit a hundred years into a few hours of conversation. And each word she offered had felt weak somehow. Pathetic, even. Her words had seemed like silly attempts to explain something that was big, universal, something that was larger than words. She tried to describe the depths of pain she’d felt and the heights of anguish. But none of her words did it justice. She feared Maggie would never know her the way she wanted her to.

What Marigold really wanted was to sew their hearts together with thread and needle so that Maggie knew everything, knew how scared she’d been, and how her entire life had been sadness without her daughter, and how she never stopped thinking about her, and how every ticking second on the clock was peppered with thoughts of Maggie. But hearts can’t be sewn together. They will always be separated by flesh, bone, and distance. And weak words are all anyone can use.

Marigold crawled out of bed. She stepped over Coot, the young man who was married to her daughter, and the large dog who slept on the floor between them. The men were covered with flannel blankets, fast asleep on the floorboards. The dog was snoring.

Marigold walked outside beneath the night sky. From the breezeway of the motor inn, she could see Mobile Bay, calm as bathwater.

“Evening,” said Joseph. “Going for a walk?”

“Yeah,” she said. “You wanna come?”

“No thanks,” he said. “But you be careful.”

“I will.”