Room 263

Joy shifted gears roughly, sending another annoyed glance at her cell phone in the passenger seat. She’d been driving for six hours from her college in Orlando back to her hometown in Cambridge, Georgia, and she’d told Kenny to call her, if not to make sure she was okay, then at least to give her a little company.

It’d been two years since she’d seen Karen Graham or Cambridge at all for that matter. Two years since they separated from the stage in the gym after graduation and promised to keep in touch. Joy had driven away that very night, as fast as she could to get away from the wretched little hamlet. Karen had written maybe three times, Joy perhaps two. They’d been best friends, but keeping in touch proved harder than it seemed.

But then Karen’s grandmother had a heart attack last night, and she’d called Joy, asking her to come home, for a while at least.
Karen’s mother and father had passed away their junior year in high school, her grandmother was the only family she had left. So, even though Joy had never really known the woman, she’d given notice to her teachers and packed her bags within four hours of Karen’s call.

Her boyfriend Kenny, seemed to have forgotten her.

She took a deep breath and cracked her neck as she passed the wooden sign that announced the entrance to Cambridge. The three apartment buildings, then the lake, then the fast food chains. She pulled into the Burger King for breakfast. As the woman passed Joy her coffee and muttered, “have a nice morning,” she glanced around again at her phone, still idle in the seat.

As she pulled away, she reached for the dratted thing, just to check and see if it was on. Yes, of course it was. The blinking 4:32am on the green screen taunted her, telling her that her boyfriend was sleeping away as she drove through twenty-three different counties to get home.

Cambridge Memorial was about two blocks down. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw one of her old high-school classmates lying on a bench in the early morning sun, newspaper sheets covering her. Amazing what a year or two can do to a person, she mused.

She pulled into the parking lot of the hospital, sipping at her coffee. There were maybe two other cars there.

Getting out, she pulled her pink fleece sweater closer to her arms and stared at the cell phone. After a moment of reluctance grabbed it and dropped it into the deep pocket of her sweater. Maybe he’d call around six, when he woke up.
She shivered again. It was chillier here than in Orlando. On campus at Rollins, winter reached a minimum of maybe forty degrees. Here, she saw a light frost dusting the roof of the hospital, and here it was only late October.

The coffee warmed her though, and as she pushed open the doors to the hospital.
There was a clerk sitting at the desk, her fingers clicking at a keyboard. “May I help you?” she asked hitting one last key, then glancing up at Joy.

“I know visiting hours are over, but there’s an older woman here, a Mrs. Graham, who may be in critical condition. I was just wondering if it were possible for me to check up on her.”

“Of course,” the girl smiled, moving a piece of gum around in her mouth. “This is Cambridge, honey, as long as you’re quiet, there are no visiting hours. What did you say her name was?

“Graham.”

The girl typed a couple of things into her computer, then stood. She pointed down the long corridor to the left. “Take the elevator to the second floor. She’s in 263.”

“Thank you,” Joy said, taking another sip of her coffee.

“And, turn your phone on vibrate, please.” The girl called down the hall.

Joy turned, “How did you know I had a phone?”

She smacked her gum and shrugged. “You look like the type.”

Joy nodded, then turned and headed to the elevator.
She’d met Karen’s grandmother once, at the Grahams’ funeral when she was sixteen. She couldn’t recall her face, her voice, or even which side of the family she’d been on. From that point on, if she and Karen were to get together, Joy’s house would be the place they were.

She peeked into the room, as the door had been left ajar. The nurse stationed at the counter on the second floor appeared to be asleep. As Joy looked at the woman in disbelief, a man in scrubs pushing a cart of Jell-O stopped for a moment and winked at Joy. “She’s a light sleeper,” he whispered.

“Who’s there?” a groggy voice demanded from the inside of the room.

Joy jumped at the voice, but pulled open the door and stepped in. “Mrs. Graham?”

“Yes, who are you?” the woman demanded again.

“I’m a friend of your granddaughter’s,” Joy said, stepping up to the side of the woman’s bed and laying her coffee on the night stand. “She called me and asked me to come visit.”

“Really?” the woman said softly. She turned, and looked at Joy with a stiff smile. “And what is your name?”

Joy smiled at this woman who resembled an apple doll, with her wrinkles. “I’m Joy Cableson.”

“Well, Joy Cableson, I was sleeping.”

“I know ma’am,” Joy said, taking a seat from the desk and pulling it beside the woman. “I’m sorry to wake you. I’ll leave in a few moments, but I’d like to sit here for a bit, I’ve been driving for six hours.”

“For me,” the woman snorted, turning back onto her side.

Joy sighed, and held the coffee to her nose, willing herself to wake up. She needed to have enough energy to drive to her mother’s house when she was done here. The room, she noted, was nicer than any that she’d stayed in when she’d broken the occasional bone as a child. It was still cold, and smelled of antiseptic, but the television wasn’t elevated above the counter, but instead rested on it, and the bathroom had a door rather than a curtain. The beeping of the heart monitor was the only sound other than the air conditioner in the room.

“Does this scare you?” the woman said, suddenly turning back to Joy.

“What?”

“The idea of death. I’ll be gone soon, you know. It’s always seemed strange to me, the idea of dying.”

Joy turned to the woman. “I think death is just another step, another beginning.”

“What if you’re not religious?” the woman countered, reaching for the button on the side of her bed. She elevated herself up to a sitting position and looked Joy in the eyes. “Then what is it?”

“A lesson,” she said, glancing at the window. “I’ve never heard of a dying person who had the freedom to be so philosophical about death. You’re not going to die though, it was a very minor attack from what the nurse told me, Mrs. Graham.” This was a lie, but it was best to comfort the woman.

She snorted again. “Call me Alli.”

“Alli, then. Why are you asking me? I’m only nineteen.”

“Yes, but no farther from death than I am, if you ask me. That six-hour drive was a risk that you took. If you had died then, does that mean that you weren’t philosophical today?”

“You’re just looking for conversation,” Joy yawned. “It’s five in the morning, aren’t you tired?”

“No, would you be if you’d done nothing but sleep for a little under three weeks now?”

Joy smiled through her yawn.

The woman settled down onto her bed again. “Tell me how my granddaughter is. It seems so long ago that I last saw her.” This didn’t sound bitter, but it made Joy wonder if Karen had even accompanied her grandmother up to the hospital in the ambulance.

“I haven’t seen her in over two years myself,” Joy answered. “But she sounded well enough over the phone.”

“You’re close to her?”

“We were best friends for eight years.”

The woman smiled again, her wrinkled face spreading over her mouth. “She was a beautiful child, but my daughter took her away. I was left by myself for so long. I don’t even know how the girl found out about me.”

Joy frowned down at Alli Graham. She’d thought it was by the will of Karen’s parents that she’d ended up with her grandmother.

“She looked like I did when I was a child. Can you guess what color this used to be?” she asked, picking up a thin white curl from her shoulder.

“Black?” Joy said, guessing the color of Karen’s hair.

Alli smiled and leaned back on her pillow, closing her eyes, “it was a fiery red.”

Joy smiled again.

“Ah,” Alli sighed. “I hated it, of course, until I was older.” She paused for a moment to cough, though the coughs weren’t violent, she blotted a bit of blood from her mouth then continued. “My older sister, Blythe, had the honey color yours is. The boys loved her for it, as it fell in glorious ringlets down her back. Mine was the stringiest hair could be until I got into my last years of school. I was about sixteen then, when I started to become an opponent to Blythe, someone who could take her suitors from her,” Alli chuckled.

“See us together there?” she said, pointing to one of three pictures assembled behind the coffee cup.

Joy picked up the picture and studied it. Indeed the woman on the right was more feminine and petite, but the taller woman, obviously Alli Graham even though the pictures were several years old and in black and white, was stunningly beautiful.

Joy placed it back and glanced at another picture. “Is this your husband?”

Alli reached a shaking hand and took the frame from Joy. She looked at it closely for a moment, then sighed and traced her finger along the face of the man standing next to an old warplane. “No, we never married. I was pregnant when he died at war though. I sometimes think that if Mary had met her father, she would have loved me more. Isn’t that silly?”

Joy smiled at the woman, “actually, I kind of understand it. When I’m around my little sister, she makes me happier; people seem to like me more when I’m near her.”

Alli smiled. “Has he called yet?”

“Huh?” Joy said, her head snapping up at her companion.

“You’ve checked that phone seven times,” she said, cocking her head to the side, “since you’ve been in here. I detect a man.”

“He’s probably sleeping,” Joy said harshly, taking her hand out of her pocket. “If he doesn’t call, then he’ll get an earful when I get home.”

Alli shook her head. “Don’t be so rash,” she said softly.

Joy smiled again, and leaned back into her chair. It wasn’t five minutes after she closed her eyes that she fell asleep.




It was a series of intense coughs that sprang Joy from her nap. She quickly shook her head and flew to Alli’s side. “Nurse!” she called, handing Alli a Kleenex from the bedside table.

Joy grabbed her cup of coffee, now cold, and dumped it in the sink, rinsed it, and filled it with water. “Nurse!” she cried again, “please, help me!”

Joy hurried back over to Mrs. Graham, and held the back of her head, offering her the water.

She clasped the cup and forced a bit down her own throat, coughing up more than she actually swallowed. Her fit seemed to subside for the time being though. Once again, she wiped blood from her mouth.

The heart monitor was screaming. Joy could hear it now that Alli had calmed. This was what brought a nurse into the room. “What’s wrong Mrs. Graham?” the woman asked, leaning against the doorframe.

“Nothing that wouldn’t have near killed me if my granddaughter’s friend here hadn’t been in the room,” she snapped. “Were you sleeping on the job again?”

“Ma’am! I was simply attending another patient.”

“Humph,” Alli said, slamming the water back onto the table and turning away from the woman to study the window.

The nurse motioned for Joy to follow her outside.

“She’s getting worse. Try to get her to talk to you, it will calm her.”

Joy nodded, stifling a yawn. “Maybe you should try to stay more alert,” she said. “If I hadn’t been in there, I don’t know what could have happened.”

The woman smirked. “You attend your business, and I’ll attend mine.”

Joy shrugged. Maybe she should report this nurse to the front. She turned and walked into the room.

“Are you okay now, Alli?” she asked, kneeling beside her.

Alli took a deep breath, which rattled in her lungs. If possible, over the hour that Joy had slept, Alli seemed to have aged. Her skin hung more loosely on her face, it was a waxy color and even seemed to have a like texture. She was not in a good state.

“I’m fine,” she muttered. “You can go back to sleep if you like.”

“Actually,” Joy smiled, “I’m refreshed. Would you mind telling me about your young man in this picture here?”

“Peter?” Alli sighed in a dreamy way, much like a girl does when she’s crushing. “He was beautiful, wasn’t he?”

Joy lifted an eyebrow, picking up the picture of the man again. He was wearing one of those old fashioned helmets with the straps that hung down on either side, but he did have an exceptionally handsome face.

“He wasn’t much in scholastics,” Alli said, “but he was intelligent in his own ways, cunning. We met for the first time at market, when he told me I shouldn’t buy a new brand of fertilizer until I’d heard about it from other farmers. ‘Gossip,’ he said, ‘is more reliable than labels.’

“You must understand, of course, that women’s rights were in full boom, and I wanted so badly to be a little Elizabeth Cady Stanton when I grew up, only more attractive,” she added with a smile. “So I ignored him, and used the fertilizer on my garden. It worked wonders on my rooted stuff, carrots and potatoes were beautiful that year, but on the more tender plants, whew.”—she flipped her hand at Joy—“it rotted right through my tomatoes. Sure enough, it was the talk of the town within a week of my ill harvest. Good thing for me though, that I hadn’t seen that boy from the supermarket since, so my embarrassment was private.

“It was soon after that I did see him again, near homecoming time, I remember because I was furious when he didn’t ask me. I was chatting with my girlfriends who were in a state, because my new pedal pushers were absolutely scandalous and he came up to the lockers where we stood, leaned against them right between my friends and me and gave me his best devilish grin. ‘So,’ I remember him smiling in this all-knowing way, ‘how’d those plants turn out?’

“I gave him an earful, I did. Then stalked away from him in a rage. My friends, June and Belle were all in a flurry, they stared after him for a few moments then ran after me. They couldn’t shut up about the new boy, Peter Watson, all through Biology.”

“And?”

“They told me I should corner him at lunch and throw myself at him shamelessly, pedal pushers and all.”

“What?” Joy said, a smile breaking out on her face. “What year was this?”

“Fifty four,” Alli sighed, holding up her fingers to make sure. “Yes, I was sixteen, so it would have been fifty four.”

“Weren’t girls in the fifties more conservative than that?”

“Since when are school girls conservative?”

Joy looked at Alli for a moment then nodded in agreement. “So, did you end up dating?” she asked, leaning on her hand.

Alli nodded, “not two days after that, he came up to me in the lunchroom, and just plopped himself right next to me. I tossed my hair in his face and continued to talk to Belle, but he made his conversation so loud and right in my ear that I eventually turned around to scold him again.

“When I did, he just smiled, and handed me a piece of paper before I could say a word. He was always doing that, interrupting me before I could speak! Then he got up and left.”

“What did it say?”

“Nothing!” Alli smiled, then laughed long and heartily. “It was folded like a note, but completely blank! I still don’t know what he was playing at with that. So I wrote:


Dear Peter,

I hate you, leave me alone,

Allison


Then I threw it in his face as I departed the lunch room.”

“You didn’t even flirt a little?” Joy prodded. “I would have flirted, no matter how strange he acted about it all.”

“You didn’t grow up with Blythe as a sister,” she said. “I was too busy learning to annoy her to consider copying her. Fortunately, I figured out the art soon enough.”

She reached for the coffee cup and took another long drink of water. “After Thanksgiving break, we were assigned to new classes, and I got ‘Career Choices’ with Peter. On our first day, Mr. Cuthburt asked us what our goals in life were.

“Peter, always the class clown said, ‘I want to play harmonica in a symphony orchestra,’ as seriously as he could, of course getting a laugh or two from the class. But then he went and added, ‘and I want to marry a redhead.’

“Oh, I turned as red as my hair!”

Joy sighed, “you were a lucky girl.”

“Ha! He flirted with every girl! He had a girl per class period from what I heard constantly from Irma Jenkins, my neighbor, who by then I’d decided was put on this earth to annoy me. That devilish grin I told you about gave him the nickname Caddy, like Cad. Which he was,” she added with a smile.

“On Christmas Eve, we always had a big play and a reception afterward in the gym. I remember sitting with Robbie Perkins, the second cutest boy in school, and very nearly getting asked to the winter formal, when Peter approached me from behind and sat down next to me with this death-serious look on his face. ‘Alli,’ he sighed. ‘I talked to my parents, and they said, considering your predicament, that we should get married as soon as possible. When the baby gets here, we can add a nursery onto my house until we get our own. Now, are you sure that you’re only three months along?’

“I’d opened my mouth to give him such a chewing, and my face had flushed completely in rage. Of course, Robbie took my reactions as embarrassment, and didn’t speak to me again until graduation. At the time, he politely excused himself and disappeared from my company for the next two years.”

“Oh my God, I would have murdered your Peter!” Joy gasped through her laughs, leaning down to subside them.

Alli shook her head, “I very nearly did.

“I sputtered for a few minutes, trying to find the right words to begin my lecture, when he interrupted with, ‘I thought I’d give you half your Christmas present early.’

“‘Don’t bother giving me the other half,’ I’d moaned, ‘he was my ride home! And Belle’s already gone. What were you thinking?’

“He shrugged. ‘It was spontaneous. I knew you’d want to get rid of him when we really were going to get married, so I got it out of the way early.’

“Oh I was furious,” Alli said, taking a deep breath, then letting it out on another nostalgic smile. “He told me that as he saw it, either I could accept his ride home or walk. He was right, unfortunately, and I ended up in his car for two blocks.”

“He drove as slowly as he could, and passed time by asking me about my little brothers and how my mother was coming along. She was pregnant with my little sister, Ellie. I was actually pretty impressed that he knew so much about me. When we got to my door, I experienced my first bit of flirtation and I asked him what the second half of my Christmas present was.” Alli’s voice trailed off, and she looked back down at the picture of Peter with a smile from her youth.

If Joy had been an artist, she was sure she could have drawn what Alli at sixteen looked like from just that expression.

“So what was your present?” she asked after a moment.

“Oh!” Alli said, snapping back to reality. “It was a kiss. A beautiful kiss, the best present I ever got aside from Mary.”

“Did you get him anything?”

“Yes,” Alli said softly. “That night, I took Daddy’s truck and drove to Mr. Kensington’s pawn shop. I bought him a harmonica.”



For the next half-hour, right up until the sun began peeking over the Georgian horizon, Alli talked about Peter and their courtship. Coughing fits had interrupted her only twice, but more blood had come up both times.
When Joy expressed concern about this, Alli interrupted with another Peter story. They’d dated for the rest of high school, though he still found it necessary to embarrass her from time to time.

“Kept me on my toes,” Alli had explained.

Joy felt sure that her favorite incident had been on Halloween when Alli had dressed like a witch for her friend Belle’s party during their senior year, and Peter had lectured her on how she was supposed to keep “it” a secret, and that his mother wanted her hat back as soon as possible. Apparently he’d been so “upset” during this lecture, that people had either laughed hysterically or had been wary of getting near Alli and Mrs. Watson for the next couple of months.

The sunrise caused a bit of a pause in their conversation as both Alli and Joy sighed in unison.

“Which do you like better,” Alli said, turning back to Joy, “sunrise or sunset?”

“Sunrise,” Joy answered immediately. “A new day is always better than an ending one.”

Alli considered this. “When Peter and I would go out to the boat-houses on Saturday nights, we didn’t spend the time together like the other couples did,” she said. “It was always at sunset that he’d pull out that harmonica that I’d bought him and try to figure out a new song. Or he’d just play, and I’d lean on his shoulder and close my eyes, trying to put a scene together for us to the tune of his music. When he stopped playing, I was always so far into my imaginings or asleep to notice, and he’d put his arm around me and we’d sit there for hours. On occasion we’d talk, but more often than not, the silence was too beautiful to break.

“One night, I remember, he told me about his father, who’d died in the second war. He called it that, even though neither of us had been there for the first one. He said that they’d sent home a medal for bravery, because his sacrifice saved the lives of the villagers in the little French town he’d been in. He said that the medal should have been buried with his father, because it was what’d killed him. But along with that medal, they’d brought home Daniel Watson’s journal, and there was this long letter to Peter and his mother about how much he loved them.

“I cried that night, with Peter when he told me that story. I think that was the exact moment that I fell in love with him.”

Joy looked at Alli for a moment, “why did you never marry?”

“Because I went to college for four years, and so did he, but mine was in Massachusetts, and he stayed in Georgia for his schooling. We visited, and wrote, and when his mother died, he moved up north with me and we bought a house and made plans for our wedding.”

Joy didn’t want to ask what happened. Alli’s voice had broken at then end of that last sentence.

“He got called to help the forces in Vietnam,” she said quickly. “We were together for that one night before he left. He died in a fire, trapped in the bungalow he and his fellow regiment resided in. It hadn’t yet been three months.

“His possessions were sent to me when he passed on. The boy who brought me the telegraph was missing an arm, and he informed me that he had survived that fire, only because he’d sneaked out to meet someone. He told me that Peter played his harmonica every night for me, and that he told the boys about me and our high-school courtship on the nights when it was too tense to sleep, nights like that of the fire.”

She looked at Joy with eyes that held so much pain, her voice broke again to a high pitched sound that was very much crying, “he said that when he’d taken leave because of his arm, he’d wanted to come meet me before he went home to his mother, he thought that he needed to tell me just how much Peter loved me. The box didn’t contain much, for most of Peter’s belongings were lost in the fire. There were six letters to me from the men in the bungalow that had been saved because they were contained in a steel box. They were all good-naturedly suggesting that I leave Peter for them. And a charcoal portrait of me that one of the men must have drawn based on my picture that, according to the boy, Peter always carried. None of it, aside from the shiny, black harmonica, actually belonged to my Peter. When he died, I know a part of me died too, because as it was obvious by the contents of the box, where he went, I went, whether or not I knew it.

“And I did go to heaven with Peter, because he sent me an angel. Mary was born that December. I gave her his harmonica on her sixteenth birthday; she never played it, but I know she took excellent care of it. Maybe she still has it.”

Joy didn’t know how to respond. She wasn’t crying yet, but she knew that if Alli went on like that, she would be eventually.

Alli drew another ragged breath, and this time when she breathed out, she seemed to deflate. “Tell Mary I love her,” Alli sighed to Joy. “She left me when she was young, and hardheaded, and I forgive her for it. Maybe you should tell her what I’ve told you. I never got the chance to tell her the story.”

Joy didn’t speak, as Alli’s voice grew softer and more distant. She couldn’t speak.

“I want to see Peter now,” she said, glancing over at Joy. “It’s been so long. You take care of your young man, you’ll know when you’ve found the right one,” she said, “circumstances often change overnight.”

The heart monitor’s beeps became farther apart. Joy knelt at Alli’s side. “Where’re you going, Allison Graham?” she whispered.

Alli smiled and gently squeezed Joy’s hand. “Home,” she said, taking one last breath. It was then that the monitors began to scream again.

Joy stared at Alli’s body for a minute, not registering what’d just happened. She opened her mouth to ask another question about Peter, to distract her, to bring her back, but Alli didn’t flinch. She picked up her hand and held it for a moment, then took a deep breath and collapsed onto Alli’s lap. Her heart sank low into her chest, and she felt this terrible hole growing in her stomach. This beautiful, vivacious woman was gone! She’d left while Joy’d sat here! She should’ve called for the nurse the first time she’s coughed up blood again! She should’ve . . . but it was too late now.

She was crying into the blanket, for this woman she’d only known for a couple of hours.

The nurse ran into the room and checked the monitor. “When?” she cried, checking Alli’s vitals.

“A few minutes ago,” Joy said, moving away from the bed.

She hit the red button on the side of Alli’s bed. “I’ll get the doctor, there’s still a chance we can revive her!”

“No,” Joy said softly, finally feeling the static in the room. She looked around, sure she’d see beautiful Peter and a redheaded Alli hand in hand. She didn’t, of course, but all the same she knew they were together again. “Let her rest, she doesn’t want to come back.”

The nurse only looked at Joy, “if you’re sure.”

“I am.”





Karen rushed into the reception room and grabbed Joy into her embrace. “Oh, it’s been so long!”

Joy nodded silently, stroking her friend’s hair. How would she tell her?

“Let’s go see my grandmother then,” Karen said, grabbing Joy’s hand and starting down the hallway.

“Karen,” Joy started, “your grandmother isn’t there.”

Her friend turned to her with a smile, “of course she is, come on.”

“No, Karen, I’ve been with her all morning, she’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Karen,” Joy said softly, touching her friend’s shoulder. “She passed away at seven this morning.”

Karen took a deep breath. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” Joy offered.

“No, that’s impossible,” Karen said shaking her head. She then turned from Joy and took off down the hallway.

Joy called her name, but she didn’t turn, and she ended up running after her.

She stopped before the elevator and turned to the first room on the left. “No! Silly, see there she is, it was just a minor attack. They had her stay because of her age, not complications. It was just an excuse to get you to visit; your mother put me up to it. Hello, Gram!”

Karen walked into the room, but Joy took a step back, watching a woman no older than sixty embrace Karen.

“Well, come on! Don’t you want to see her?”

Joy looked at the floor then away, tears blinding her eyes.

She had been in the wrong room.





The nurse at the front later told her that Miss Allison Graham had no visitors other than Joy during the entire month she’d stayed there, and gave her all of Miss Graham’s information. “Maybe you can find her family,” the nurse had said. “We sure can’t.”

“I will,” Joy had replied, feeling confidant that she would, even if it became a life’s pursuit.

Kenny never did call, but on passing outside the hospital in a daze Joy met a talkative boy named Terence, who was waiting for visiting hours so he could check on his mother in the maternity ward.

Joy, feeling she couldn’t return home just yet, decided she needed something to keep her mind busy had offered to accompany him up when the doors opened. The woman, a Mrs. Alexander had just given birth to a beautiful little girl whom she had yet to name.

The family had been flying back from their Key West vacation home and made an emergency landing in Cambridge when Rose Alexander had gone into labor. As Mr. Alexander and Terence had no place to stay that night, Joy invited them to come back to her mother’s house, who welcomed all company.

Terence and Joy talked through the night on the large porch swing outside her home, and she recanted a slightly edited version of Alli’s tale to him, as she felt she could never fully reveal the entire thing, unless of course she found Mary. Should I look under Watson or Graham, she pondered to herself.

He found the idea of tracing Alli’s family absorbing and in the process of a torrent of questions, asked if he might help. Joy told him she’d need to think on it, and after a moment of swinging in the silence of early morning, she fell asleep.

Terence, who was not yet ready to go inside, as he’d had a full night’s sleep already and was restless from the birth of his little sister, allowed Joy to rest on his shoulder. Out of his pocket he pulled a gift his grandmother had given him about three years ago, for his sixteenth birthday.

The sounds of the harmonica floated through the winds of Cambridge, over the street, the school, and the boathouses and dock, then drifted lazily back to the house. As the sound enveloped her, even if only heard in a dream, Joy smiled.