“I stayed up late that night peering up at the rafters, thinking on Thena’s words. A beautiful woman, the kindest heart, did not gossip, kept to herself. I added this to the memories of her I’d collected from the people on the Street. Thena could not know how much I needed those small jigsaws of my mother, which together, over the years, I forged into a portrait of the woman who lived in dreams, like Big John, but only as smoke.”
