Chapter 129

• [Carnelia]
• As the two of us stand still watching Orion disappear into the crowd, I don’t have anything useful to say. I’ve never raised a child of my own to early adulthood.
• So I do the only thing I can. I hold her. As she cries against my shoulder, I let her weep out all of her pain as she tells me about how much time she has lost. I comfort her as best as I can, patting her back and smoothing her hair as she bemoans every decision she has made over the forty-plus years she should have been there raising her family.