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Willa took his place coming to visit her, because she knew that was what he would have wanted. He’d adored his mother, and pleasing her had been his life’s ambition.
    Willa had always thought her grandmother was sweet, but she’d been one of those people with invisible thorns, preventing others from getting too close. Georgie Jackson had been a nervous, watchful person, not at all frivolous, which Willa had found extraordinary, considering how rich the Jacksons had once been. But after her family had lost their money, Georgie had worked as a maid for various wealthy families in town until she was well into her seventies.
    She’d always been quiet, like Willa’s father. Willa’s mother had been the loud one in the family, and Willa could still remember her laugh, a sweet staccato sound like embers popping. She’d been a receptionist at a local law office, but she’d died when Willa was six. Thathad marked the phase when Willa used to like to play dead. She used to pose herself on the couch, completely soaked, as if she’d drowned there. She would drape herself awkwardly across the car hood, as if she’d been hit. Her favorite death was Death By Spoons, in which she would lie on the kitchen floor, douse herself with ketchup, and stick spoons under her armpits. At that age, Willa hadn’t understood death, hadn’t seen it as a bad thing if it had happened to someone as nice as her mother, and frankly, she’d been fascinated by it.
    Once her grandmother had caught her having an imaginary conversation with her mother, and had immediately opened all the windows and burned sage. Ghosts are horrible things , she’d said. You don’t talk to them. You keep them away . It had hurt Willa, and it had taken a long time to forgive her grandmother for denying her a link to her mother, for making her scared of it, no matter how silly.
    All those superstitions were gone from her grandmother’s memory now. Her grandmother didn’t even recognize Willa anymore, but Willa knew she liked the melody of voices, even though she no longer understood the words. So this was what Willa did several times a week; she came and talked about what was on the news, what the trees looked like this time of year, what was selling in her shop right now, what improvements she was making to her dad’s house. She told her grandmother about the new couch, but not about Colin.
    She talked until the food-service lady brought Georgie’s breakfast, then Willa helped feed her. Afterher tray had been cleared, she gently washed her grandmother’s face and sat back beside her.
    She hesitated a few moments before she brought the invitation from her back pocket. “I’ve been debating whether or not I should tell you about this. There’s a party at the Blue Ridge Madam next month. The Women’s Society Club is celebrating the formation of the club. Paxton Osgood wants to honor you at the party, which I guess is nice. But you never talked about it. I don’t know if it really meant anything to you. If I thought it did, I would go. But I just don’t know.”
    Willa looked down at the invitation and did the math for the first time. She realized her grandmother had been only seventeen when she’d helped form the club. That had been the year her family had lost the Blue Ridge Madam, the year she’d given birth to Willa’s father.
    It pained Willa to think of it now, but she’d never been particularly proud of being a Jackson when she was younger. But the older she got, the more she came to appreciate just how hard her family had worked to support themselves, how no one but her had ever cast their eyes down in shame at what they had lost. Willa had already faced and accepted that her grandmother could no longer tell her things she wanted to know about her family, that she’d missed all the opportunities to ask her when she was clear-minded, or to ask her father while he was alive. But times like this she still felt it acutely, all the I love you s she should