I smiled, just a little. Bridget was right—there were blessings even here. Small drops of goodness not to be found anywhere else. In no other place had I ever known what it was to have a mother.

I rose and went to collect the shards of her music box—a little spinning dancer on her mechanism, a littering of dried flower petals, a cheap paste ring, and two folded papers. I swept them into the skirt of my gown and brought them to her, depositing them on the bench and fingering each piece. The box, however, was beyond saving.

And despite my desire to make use of this time here, I felt just about as useful to her. I can do nothing for her, Lord. Nothing. She leaned forward and her feeble old fingers poked at the pile, sorting through and feeling each object. Then her feet jolted out to stop her forward fall—long, swollen feet that were dirty, as if rarely washed. I caught her and steadied her back on the bench, and that’s when the odd thought came into my head—wash her feet.

I stared down at them, spilling out the tops of worn slippers with the sores of old age marring doughy skin. They were scabbed and weathered, and a rim of redness traced the outline of her shoes.

I had nothing to wash them with. No water, no rag. And when she caught me staring, she tucked them swiftly under the bench, her asylum gown curtaining them.

Something else, then. Some other way to encourage her. I grabbed one of the papers and opened it. “Would you like me to read this to you?”

It was a hand-copied poem by Longfellow, a fanciful piece about dancing daffodils, but she only gazed ahead and fiddled with the fabric of her gown as I read it. I opened the second—a letter. With a smite of conscience for eavesdropping, I skimmed the lines about holding tight to the memories of “us,” and not letting the tide pull them away from her, then I read them aloud. I looked up at the weathered face, where stories and triumphs and losses lay buried.

It was toward the end that a line caught my eye and I slowed to read it again:

I beg you to tell them who you truly are. Let people remember the real you. I will no longer call you Anna, for that is not the woman who has my heart.

Philippe

Another look at the woman’s face, but she seemed unfazed. What was her real name? Who had she been? “Do you know this Philippe?”

She blinked, as if waking up, and her eyes focused on the grass at her feet. “Philippe? Here?”