We talked about New York, a city she’d never seen, and I gave her the whole parade: the guys playing handball outside the stop at West Fourth, the famous cupcakes that smelled better than they tasted—But they smell so good, I said, don’t get me wrong—and the time I dropped an air conditioner from my bedroom window. I told her about watching one rat eat the remains of another rat on the subway tracks while the A train rattled closer.

“You’re good at describing moments,” she said.

That was just it. I couldn’t remember my life as anything but these snapshots, small gestures of sight or reaction that were supposed to suggest the larger truths of my existence.

“Do you know many people?” Tilly asked. “Your stories don’t have any people in them.”

“I know people. Sometimes I think I know too many.”

She turned to look at me. “You’re very clever,” she said. “Just like your mother.”

I didn’t know what to say to this. I didn’t know what it meant for her to say it to me. “I’m not happy there,” I said instead. “In New York, I mean.”

Here was one of my larger truths: I was lonely, was the long and short of it. I could talk for so long without saying it outright, but it was always there.

“Then maybe you should leave.”

She took me to the famous round courthouse. It was round. She showed me padlocks dangling from long metal chains in the town green. “People lock up their love,” she explained. “It’s local tradition.”

“Oh?”

“It may seem stupid to you,” she said. “But to some people it means a lot.”

We got hot dogs from a vendor on the green and ate them with our fingers. She showed me the town’s history like she was proud of it. I guessed she probably was a little bit; this was where she’d spent her life. In any case, there was a bronze plaque: George Lovelock had been a Welsh pioneer following rumors about silver. Local legend claimed he dipped a knife in quinine every morning and licked the powder off the blade just to prove he could. He wasn’t sick, not once, until he got so sick he died. This was typhoid, 1907. His last night on earth, he was deep in delirium, carrying a candle into a mine shaft. His career was its own justification and eulogy.

I told her about losing my job back in New York. She hadn’t even asked what I did for a living. “It was a terrible job,” I explained.

“Most of them are,” she said. “You gonna get another one?”

“To be honest, I’m not sure what I’m doing next.”

“I bet your mother loves that.”

My laughter came out like an animal noise, frantic. I was nervous. I still hadn’t shown her the letter.

“Dora was always big on planning ahead.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “She still is.”

“What did she think about—you know—about your coming out here?”