Leni felt them all looking at her. She thought suddenly, sharply, how much this would have meant to Mama, these people coming out to say goodbye. Had Mama known how much they cared?

“Thank you,” Leni said. The two inadequate words were lost amid the sound of waves slapping on boat hulls. What should she say? “I don’t know how…”

“Just talk about her,” Mr. Walker said in a gentle voice.

Leni nodded, wiped her eyes. Tried again, her voice as loud as she could manage to make it. “I don’t know if any woman ever came to Alaska less prepared for it. She couldn’t cook or bake or make jam. Before Alaska, her idea of a necessary survival skill was putting on false eyelashes and walking in heels. She brought purple hot pants up here, for God’s sake.”

Leni took a breath. “But she came to love it here. We both did. The last thing she said to me before she died was, Go home. I knew what she meant. If she saw you guys here for her, she would give one of her bright smiles and ask you why you all were here instead of drinking and dancing. Tom, she’d hand you a guitar, and Thelma, she’d ask you what the hell you’ve been up to, and Large Marge, she’d hug you till you couldn’t breathe.” Leni’s voice broke. She looked around, remembering. “It would fill her heart to see you all here, to know you’d given up time, with all you have to do, to remember her. To say goodbye. She said to me once that she felt like she’d been nothing, a reflection of other people. She never quite understood her own worth. I hope she’s looking down now and knows … finally … how loved she was.”

A murmur of agreement, a few words, and then: quiet. Grief this deep was a silent, lonely thing. From now on, the only time Leni would hear her mother’s voice would be in her own mind, thoughts channeled through another woman’s consciousness, a continual quest for connection, for meaning. Like all motherless girls, Leni would become an emotional explorer, trying to uncover the lost part of her, the mother who had carried and nurtured and loved her. Leni would become both mother and child; through her, Mama would still grow and age. She would never be gone, not as long as Leni remembered her.

Large Marge threw a bouquet of flowers into the water.

“We’ll miss you, Cora,” Large Marge said.

Mr. Walker threw a bouquet of fireweed into the water. It floated past Leni, a bright pink splash on the waves.

Matthew met Leni’s gaze. He was holding a bouquet of fireweed and lupine that he’d picked this morning with MJ.