Although this was not the spring break she’d wanted, she wouldn’t change it. It was funny how things worked out the way they did. If she had talked her father into taking her to Florida, her life would be very different right now.

She wouldn’t have met Casey. She wouldn’t have laughed, actually laughed, with her father in the coffee shop. And what about Hannah? And the Epiphany drama? And her show?

Amelia replaced the letter in the envelope. She tucked it and the postcard into her top dresser drawer with her letter from Natalie, the piece of Casey’s heart, and the elastic band with the blue bead from Hannah.

She stood before the open drawer. She’d acquired these things in the last couple of days. Her little, hidden spring-break shrine. She touched the blue bead on the elastic band, then plucked the band from the drawer and crossed the room to the mirror on the back of her door. She ran her fingers through her hair—pulling, raking, gathering the long strands into a bun.

It wasn’t perfect by any means—it was slightly lopsided—but it looked okay. “Poor thing,” she whispered. She smiled at herself. No, I’m not, she thought. Not me. She lifted her chin. She turned her head from side to side. She chewed her lower lip. Then she peered at her reflected image straight on for a long time. She thought about the women in her life. Her mother, Mrs. O’Brien, Louise, Epiphany, Hannah. She knew it was strange, but she thought of Epiphany and Hannah as two different people.

She wondered what kind of woman she would be when she grew up.

Suddenly she worked the band out of her hair and shook her head. Her hair fell around her face and over her shoulders like a curtain. She went back to her dresser, returned the elastic band, and shut the drawer.

There was nothing of her mother’s in her shrine, her drawer. Many years ago her father told her that he had a box of things that had belonged to her mother. The box was Amelia’s; she just had to ask for it. She rarely thought about it. And she had never asked because he was hard to ask things of. And so much time had passed since he’d first told her about it. It had been so long ago that it was part of the lore of her childhood as she remembered it. But had she remembered it correctly? Besides, asking anything about her mother seemed to drop a weight of sadness on him that he carried around for hours or even days. But now, she thought she could ask. She would.

There was nothing of Mrs. O’Brien’s in her shrine, either. But there were things from Mrs. O’Brien everywhere. From the curtains in Amelia’s room to her bedspread to her lacy pillowcases to her favorite necklace to bracelets. On and on and on. And Mrs. O’Brien, herself, was there, always there, day after day.