When the dayroom matron had placed the paper before me with a pen and inkwell, I stared down at the words. I am not a concert pianist. I took the pen, bracing myself to write the lie again, but all I could think of, with jarring dissonance, was Marcel Beauchene and the odd way he’d put off my return to performing. And the fact that it was my father who’d talked him into taking me on, arranging my engagements, forming my career—and that had ended as soon as Father was no longer alive.

I wrote the line once, then again. Dropping the pen, I curled my fingers into my lap and quietly sobbed. The tears had been pressurized all day, ever since Richard, and now they burst forth in messy paths down my face. I quivered from the force of keeping silent up to now, thankful the orderly’s back was to me.

But as I clung to the edge of that bench, a warm hand slid over mine, smooth fingers in a gentle clasp around my shaky ones, the sweetest human contact I’d received in a great while, and it flooded my heart, making a bridge to the island of my lonely soul. I looked over at her, but silent and elegant Anna stared straight ahead with the vacant countenance of a feeble mind.

Within that worn-down body resided a spark of instinctual nurturing. She was a mother—or had been once. And though her mind was shuttered, her heart knew how to mother still.

My heart warmed, a momentary balm over the deeper, lifelong hurt of motherlessness that never seemed to go away. The woman’s face was wreathed in a calm smile directed out at the room at large as her fingertips pressed their way over every knuckle and vein on my hand with tender knowing. So this is what it’s like. I felt every move of her fingers, the serenity flowing from her to me, and I soaked up her mothering hungrily. Greedily. I did not let go until they called for me.

When they shuffled us all into our beds, I almost wished I could be in the long-stay ward so I could listen to Anna’s music box and fall asleep in her warm presence. Silence was the loudest sound when one was trying to lay a chaotic mind to rest, and I couldn’t stop thinking about that lost old woman, and about Richard, with a pang of agony.

I lay chilled and tearless on my mattress that night, not believing I’d ever fall asleep again, but eventually a leaden tiredness overcame me and I sank into it.