Their first morning in London, a Monday, Sarah looked out the window and saw a squirrel eating from a woman’s hand. Their hotel, the Royal Lancaster, stood on the north edge of Hyde Park. It was the middle of February, off-season, the only way they could afford to come, and the reason, Sarah believed, that they’d been given a room on such a high floor with windows facing south. These rooms went for much more in the summer, she was sure. They had a beautiful view over the Italian fountains at the top of the Serpentine and the park stretching away to the left and right. The landscape looked as though it had been drawn overnight in wet ink, the grass a moist dark green, the bare trees blackened by rain. Even the woman kneeling down to the squirrel was wearing a slick yellow raincoat that looked shiny and fresh.
Sarah shook her head in wonder. They had never had a room with such a view. In her life, she had rarely felt taller than the trees.
She called to her daughter. She thought Amelia would like to see that the squirrels were so tame.
Amelia, already up and dressed and reading at the table in the corner of the room, did not look up. “I’m reading,” she said.
Sarah let the curtain fall closed and watched her. She was thirteen and pretty in a girlish way, not like some of her friends who already looked grown-up. She played the violin, seriously and well, and had an enviable sense of confidence. She was beginning to enter state competitions, and Sarah, sick with nerves in the audience, marveled at the self-possession she exhibited when she walked onto the stage. Other times, though, when Sarah watched her unaware, walking up the block from school or standing in the driveway waiting for a friend, this same calm manifested itself in a stillness, a quiet wariness that worried her.
“Any time you guys are ready,” Amelia said, turning a page.
It was ten o’clock and her father was in the shower and Sarah was still in her robe. They’d said on the plane that they would try to get an early start each morning; they only had one week. But Sarah and Mark had been exhausted when the wake-up call came at eight. Amelia, however, had jumped out of bed. It was her spring break and her first time abroad.
“There are some squirrels eating out of a woman’s hand in the park.” Sarah turned back to the window and pulled the curtains wide open. This, as she had hoped, Amelia could not resist. She had always loved animals and that seemed not to have changed. She put down her book and came over.
“Down there.” Sarah pointed. “On the left side of the water, past the fountains. See?”
Amelia nodded. “They’re coming right to her hand. I wonder what she’s feeding them.”
“We could try it later. Would you like that?”
“Sure.”
Sarah tried to see her expression, but Amelia kept her face turned to the park. What Sarah tried to remember is whether Amelia had had this stillness before. She’d been a good baby, never too fussy, and as a young child could play happily by herself for hours. From the day she entered school she’d been an excellent student, apparently motivated by an inner need to achieve. Still, Sarah was sometimes sure that there had been a spark in her eye, an easier laughter, that was now gone.
Mark came out of the bathroom. He was dressed and combing his hair. “All yours,” he said to Sarah. Then, quietly, as she walked past him, “How are you?”
He was referring, she knew, to the fact that she’d had a drink on the plane. “Fine,” she answered, trying to warm the coldness out of her voice. She was scared of flying, and anyway it had been almost four months since she had last had too much. “And you? How did you sleep?”
“Like a log,” he said, kissing her on the cheek.
Sarah and Mark had come through a bad time after she discovered his affair, a year of silent dinners and midnight arguments. The affair was already over when she learned of it, and Mark had been the one to end it—of that she was certain. He swore it had been a mistake; that he was still in love with her. He was as committed as ever to the marriage, he said, and this did seem to be true. He proposed therapy, a suggestion that surprised her because he was such a private man, and a few months later the sessions seemed to come to a natural, satisfactory conclusion.
The counselor, beaming at them on the day of their final meeting, told them they were a great success. “Go into the world and love each other,” he said, opening his arms wide as they left his office. The gesture made Sarah feel they should have been a pair of white doves flying out of a bag. She very nearly flapped her arms, but Mark took her elbow and guided her out of the building. It was spring and everything seemed back on track. They took down the storm windows and put up the screens. The daffodil bulbs she’d planted by the garage sent up clusters of green shoots. Then one evening—making julienne salad for dinner and waiting for Amelia to come home from her violin lesson and Mark to come home from the office—Sarah poured a shot of rum into her Pepsi. This in itself was not unusual, but tonight, sipping the cocktail, slicing the ham and cheese for the salad, the rum seemed to loosen the hold she had on herself. She poured another. Her mother had been an alcoholic, her grandmother one as well. Did this explain Sarah’s problems? Sarah didn’t think so, despite all the rhetoric of the age. She poured another drink. Two hours later the salad was a soggy confetti instead of the elegant strips it was meant to be and Sarah, looking deep into the white plastic bowl, knew this was a metaphor for her. She was in tears when Amelia and Mark came home, but on that night and the ones that followed, she was easily able to conceal what was happening. The fact of the matter was, she didn’t drink that much. She never stumbled or slurred. She never got angry or abusive. And she never stopped doing any of the things they expected of her—laundry, shopping, cooking, cleaning. She just drank and got sad.
In the lobby, Sarah asked about the squirrels. Was feeding allowed? The concierge, kind but distant, with a smile that suggested pity rather than camaraderie, said that it was not recommended but it was not illegal; it was, in fact, quite a popular activity with the tourists, feeding the squirrels in Hyde Park. He went on to say that this time of year they could also see bunnies, geese, coots, moorhens, and magpies. It was too late for the mandarin duck and too early for the cygnets, two more favorites with the tourists. He held out a list of wildlife commonly spotted in London’s parks, which Amelia took. The concierge bowed.
“Was he making fun of us?” Amelia asked Sarah when they were out on the street.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’ll try it tomorrow, yes?”
Amelia nodded, and Sarah squeezed her arm. It was all she could do not to pull her into a full hug.
Probably no one ever would have found out. Sarah would have pulled herself together eventually, would have regained the control she felt she had almost intentionally surrendered. She was already having an easier time getting up in the morning and taking walks in the afternoon for exercise. But one day Amelia came home early from school and took a sip of Sarah’s Pepsi. It was sitting on the counter by the kitchen sink, in the tall water glass Sarah always used.
“Mom?” she called.
Sarah had gone to the front door to get the mail. She’d only left the kitchen for a minute, but Amelia had used the side door. She must have been thirsty; her violin case was still slung over her shoulder.
“What’s in this?”
“I’m having a cocktail,” Sarah answered calmly. It was three o’clock in the afternoon.
“I don’t believe this.” Amelia looked at the floor, then quickly up again. “This is why you never share your drinks with me.”
Sarah thought hard, but there didn’t seem to be anything to say. It was true. She watched Amelia, who stood quietly watching her, seemingly replaying the previous weeks in light of this new information, questioning and judging everything that had been slightly out of the ordinary or difficult to understand. Coming to the end, to the ill-fated sip, she said again, “I don’t believe this,” and ran upstairs to her room.
Sarah imagined that ever after soda would be for Amelia what madeleines were for Proust, opening up whole chapters of memory, most of them painful. And the irony of it all was the timing. A few years earlier, her little pigtailed Amelia would have simply spat the mouthful into the sink and told her mother the soda had gone bad. A few years later, she might have smiled conspiratorially and asked if she could have one, too. But, at thirteen, Amelia was being subjected to a series of anti-drug classes at school that left her believing mood-altering substances of any kind slicked the road to hell. Sarah and Mark had always enjoyed a glass of wine with dinner. Now, this was nearly impossible. They sipped desultorily while Amelia harangued them with her latest facts and figures. “Did you know,” she said one evening, “that an alcoholic can be defined as anyone who uses alcohol habitually?” From her chair at the side of the table, she turned left and right, raising an eyebrow at each of them, opposing players in the tennis match of her life. “What I see here, a glass of wine every night, is a habit.”
And on this particular night, Amelia turned to her father before her first bite. Mark raised his wineglass in a mock toast to the evening lecture he believed was about to begin. Sarah, breathing slowly, stared at the store-bought peonies in the center of the table. It was odd how, even at this moment, she was proud of the arrangement she’d made.
“Something’s wrong,” Amelia said, her voice surprisingly timid.
They stood together on the north bank of the Serpentine; more accurately, Sarah now knew from studying the map at Lancaster Gate, the Long Water. She had pointed this out to Amelia and Mark.
“Long Water?” Mark said.
Tracing the map with her finger, Sarah started to say how the water was, in fact, if you looked at it, a long narrow shape before widening into the more irregular Serpentine, but Amelia interrupted her.
“Sort of long, maybe,” she said, looking at her father to see if he would think this funny.
“Good point,” he said, smiling.
Pigeons and seagulls were gathering noisily around their feet, but the squirrels Amelia was coaxing with the bread crumbs remained at a distance, scurrying about under cover of the wild bank beyond the iron fence that edged the path. It was nine o’clock, and the park was filled with slow runners and determined walkers. A few men and women in dark suits hurried by with briefcases and portfolios, their heels rhythmically crunching the brown pebbled path, their long coats flapping open as they walked. The air was cool, but the day was clear and the sunshine offered a bit of meager warmth.
Mark had been surprised by the proposal to do this first thing. He was ready with the guidebook, ready to see the British Museum before lunch, the National Gallery after. But Sarah had insisted. “It won’t take long, Mark,” she said. “Just a half hour or so. Then we’ll go to the museums.” He appealed to Amelia, but when she agreed with Sarah, he conceded. Now he stood a few steps away, just a bit up the incline where the path curved gently to the left, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat. Sarah knew he didn’t want to be here, but she also knew that he was wary of her, uncertain and therefore less critical. Amelia crouched low on the path, ticking and clucking with her tongue, and Sarah stood right behind her, more bread in her hand at the ready.
Planting daffodils by the garage had turned out to be a bad idea. It rained a lot that spring and the rain turned the bed to mud, which splattered up onto the white wall of the garage, and onto the long green daffodil leaves, and finally onto the lemon-yellow flowers themselves.
There were arguments, at night usually, and music during the afternoons. Rachmaninoff, Chopin, the “Humming Chorus” from Madama Butterfly (oh, it was the wakeful night of her soul, too), Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole. Sarah played them endlessly.
And Amelia, hearing the music, went straight to her room after school. Often, Sarah didn’t see her until dinnertime, when Mark came home.
She stood by the kitchen window, making dinner and thinking about Amelia above. She wondered if Amelia was trying to concentrate on her homework while listening for the cabinet at the end of the counter opening, the splash of liquid meeting liquid. Probably she was. Sarah thought about going out and trying to wipe off the muddy daffodils, but cleaning a flower seemed like a strange and futile thing to do.
Each morning before sightseeing, Sarah and Amelia went to the east bank of the Long Water, where they faced Peter Pan, the sprightly statue in the clearing across the water. A straight line of mossy wooden moorings ran between the two banks, occupied, usually, by brilliant white seagulls, one to each pillar, while others soared overhead, vying for position. Occasionally a few shiny black cormorants moved in and easily commandeered a few spots on the row. It was a beautiful, chaotic scene that suggested to Sarah much larger bodies of water than a small lake in a park.
Remarkably, the seagulls, pigeons, and wood doves began to recognize their little family by the third morning and gathered quickly for their morning crumbs. This was noisy and exciting, and for the first time Sarah understood why children and the elderly love feeding the birds in parks. It was thrilling being the center of so much fluttering attention. For the squirrels, she collected rolls and crackers from their lunches. She ripped and broke these into small pieces and kept them in a plastic bag in her purse. The squirrels, however, would not take the food unless they put it on the ground.
“Mom, I don’t think this is working,” Amelia said the third morning. She stood up and looked doubtfully at her mother.
Sarah was kneeling on the path, her arm extended through the fence up to the shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she answered, slightly breathless with the effort.
Amelia brushed off her pants and crouched again.
Sarah tried to think of everything she knew about squirrels. She’d visited Assateague once, a barrier island off the coast of Maryland and Virginia. The gray squirrel was endangered there and was being reintroduced. Boxes had been nailed to trees all over the island for them to nest in. At night, to check their population, park rangers went around with dim flashlights, lifting the roofs of the boxes and counting the sleeping squirrels inside. Each family had to be accounted for.
But what did squirrels eat?
“You don’t have to try so hard,” Amelia said.
“Yes, we do,” Sarah said.
It was Wednesday and Mark had brought a cup of coffee to the park. He was sitting on a bench nearby, hunched forward, sipping. He was watching them, his face pale and blank.
“Peanuts,” Sarah said suddenly. “Amelia, tomorrow let’s try peanuts.”
By the time the chrysanthemums in the side bed were in bloom (during a cold dry autumn that made the reds and oranges as vivid as Sarah had ever seen them), she understood Mark and Amelia’s fears better than she did her own behavior, so it made sense to seek help. She went to AA, but after three weeks felt certain that her problem was not that of the classic alcoholic. She didn’t fit the profile. Once before in her marriage she had had a bout of drinking, but after a few months stopped. Wasn’t a real alcoholic permanently recovering, never allowed to have another drink? But she had gone back without a problem to having a glass of wine with dinner and even a cocktail or two at parties. AA referred her to ACA, Adult Children of Alcoholics, but this didn’t help either. Same prayers, more blame, it seemed, and she didn’t want to blame her mother; none of it felt like her fault. Once, when she was twenty-five or so and had finally assembled a few facts about her family, Sarah asked her mother, Margaret, why she’d never talked about the difficulties of her own childhood, her ordeals with her mother.
But Margaret just stared at her. “And when should I have told you about it?” she said. “Over which peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich?”
She had always thought her mother’s point a good one. It reminded her of something else she’d liked to say, “Let the problems of the day be sufficient unto the day.” The same should be true for generations, her mother felt, and Sarah agreed. She gave up all acronyms and vowed to quit drinking again on her own. It was mid-October and, except for one night in November, she did.
Passing through the lobby on their fourth morning, Sarah noticed that the concierge smiled and gave a little salute in Amelia’s direction. She turned quickly to see Amelia grin and wave back.
“Did you speak to him again?” she asked when they were outside. Somehow it felt like a betrayal.
“I asked him where to get peanuts,” she said.
In the park, several aggressive geese joined the melee, as well as a few mallard pairs with impeccable manners. Quiet and noble, they took what was within reach and left the frenzied hunting and pecking to others. The number of birds seemed to be a deterrent to the squirrels, so Sarah sent Amelia farther down the path to try to lure the squirrels from the underbrush while she fed the birds in the clearing.
Mark, this morning, had brought a newspaper with his coffee. Amelia asked him if he wanted to help.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” he said, smiling at her. “This is your and your mother’s thing.”
Sarah demurred from where she was standing a few steps away. “Come on, Mark,” she said. “We’re just feeding the animals here. You’re welcome to join in.” She sounded annoyed. She tried to lob a piece of bread gently in the direction of a retiring female duck, but it hit her on the head.
Mark turned to Amelia. “I don’t think so,” he said again and began to unfurl his newspaper.
“Right,” Amelia said. “I understand.”
Perhaps it was because the yard hadn’t been raked all season. Or maybe it was because Sarah woke flushed and irritable after a late nap on a gray November afternoon. Whatever the reason, when she went outside to get some air, to try to cheer up, she began surveying the back of the house, the yard, the neighboring houses, the other backyards. Little rectangular plots of land abutting the vulnerable backs of houses. Windy screened-in porches, peeling paint, thick black wires like spindly buttresses connecting everyone to the central nave of telephone poles running down the center of the block. Their own yard needed tending to, the garage painting. There was a honeysuckle bush that had been allowed to grow into a sort of tree with a trunk so off-center and twisted it had to be supported with a two-by-four. There was a hackberry by the side patio that was so storm-ravaged Sarah counted seven blunt branches where the tree had once stretched out into a lovely shape. It brought tears to her eyes, rising, as it did, in its broken, awkward way above their house.
The sky was pale blue, fading nearly to white in the east, and the sunset was obscured by a low, cluttered horizon of trees and houses. Music, an upbeat march punctuated by steady percussion, drifted to her from the direction of the stadium: the university marching band practicing for the game that weekend. The town suddenly seemed very small, cross-hatched and cinched together by nothing more than telephone cables and marching bands.
That was when she decided to plan the trip to England. But she also decided, heading down the driveway toward the kitchen door, that she would have a drink to warm herself and rake the yard.
They were amazing, they really were. Sometimes Mark and Amelia heard a high pitch that no one else could hear; sometimes their eardrums, more sensitive than most, were disturbed by a vibration that no one else could feel. They would look at each other quickly, checking to see if the other one felt it, too. Then they would plug their ears or rub them, shaking their heads together in smiling bewilderment.
When this happened in the restaurant in Piccadilly where they were having lunch on their fifth afternoon, Sarah put down her soup spoon and looked back and forth between them. “You are just two peas in a pod,” she said.
“Mom, stop,” said Amelia.
“What? It’s true,” she said. “You’re very like your father, Amelia.”
“Mom, we both have sensitive ears. It’s no big deal.”
“Oh, I think it is.”
An argument might have started if it weren’t for the music that came on in the restaurant just then. They all recognized it: Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, one of Sarah’s favorites, only in a terrible Hooked-on-Classics version with a steady beat in the background. It was like a parody of their family grief, the comic score in place of the tragic. It was so reminiscent for all of them of the dark months of Sarah’s drinking that none of them knew what to say or where to look. This was not the first time music had united them in this way, engulfing them suddenly like an afternoon squall. And as on those other occasions, Sarah thought how this feeling, this mutual discomfort, was like a dark figure whom she had brought into their midst and now couldn’t dismiss. She was astonished by the injustice. She had not done what Mark had done. She did not have his career or Amelia’s talent. What she had was them, her family. How could she be the one who had caused the most damage?
It was drizzling when they left the restaurant. Mark stepped forward and opened one of their two umbrellas. Amelia started after him, but then stopped and turned. Someone watching might have missed the moment of indecision. She stepped quickly back up the curb and joined her mother under the second umbrella. It was an apology, Sarah knew, not her wish, but she took it, squeezing Amelia’s hand.
Raking leaves. Because it was something Mark usually did, it had not occurred to Sarah that the job would include clearing the leaves out of the evergreen bushes that lined the front of the house. Dry yellow and brown leaves littered the top of the bushes, and some had nestled down into the dense dark green needles for the season. She worked with her hands until they were scratched and raw, then switched to the rake. It was a strange and wonderful thing, beating those bushes with the rake.
The morning of their last full day was still and white. A low mist the color of the sky skirted the trees in the park. It was warmer than it had been all week and smells from blocks away—fish, burning coffee, diesel fumes—hung in the air in pockets. The surface of the water was glassy, the wake of a single coot rippling in long lines undisturbed. Walking past the Italian fountains, which were not yet running, Sarah felt that sounds, too, were attenuated. Somewhere in the distance she heard the noise of construction, and she walked carefully, listening to her shoes on the path.
The day before, the squirrels had finally taken a few peanuts from their hands, hers and Amelia’s. It had delighted them both and relieved Sarah, as she felt this was something Amelia would certainly take home with her, something she would always remember about their trip to London. It was worth the time spent, Sarah knew, because Amelia loved animals and would tell all her friends how they’d gone to the Serpentine every morning, persevering until they’d earned the squirrels’ trust. It was something they had succeeded in together, and she thought it would grow, over time, into a good memory for Amelia, an example of her mother at her best.
They were back early this morning because Mark wanted to memorialize the event in pictures, a suggestion Sarah appreciated. The squirrels came to their fingertips again, and although it was impossible to tell, she thought they must be the same ones.
“Why don’t we name them?” she said to Amelia.
“Name them?”
“Well, after this week, don’t you feel like you know them?”
“After this week—” Amelia started, but she stopped and shook her head.
Sarah said cheerfully, “Well, I do. What about George and Lucy? And the one in front of you could be Camilla. Or maybe that’s too fancy for a squirrel?”
Amelia remained quiet, avoiding her mother’s gaze. A few minutes passed, and Sarah said softly, “I was trying to be funny.”
Amelia nodded.
When they had only a handful of peanuts left, Mark came over and said he wanted to give it a try.
Sarah stood. “Why?”
Mark stared at her. “Oh, look. The thing’s done. I just want to see if they’ll come to me, too. We leave tomorrow.”
Amelia, still on the ground, made a stream of kissing noises to soothe the squirrels.
Mark reached for the bag of peanuts Sarah held. When she did not offer it to him, he stuck his hand in awkwardly and took a few. Then he leaned over from the waist, the camera bag swinging forward suddenly. The squirrels scattered.
Sarah said, “It takes patience, Mark. You have to crouch down.”
He crouched, and with Amelia clucking and ticking, the squirrels cautiously approached.
“Hold it out to them,” Sarah said.
Mark extended his arm.
“It would be better if you put a few on the ground first, until they’re used to you.”
Amelia looked up. “Mom,” she said.
Sarah turned and walked up the path to the clearing. Across the water, smoke rose behind Peter Pan, and the smell of burning leaves filled the air. With his arms up the way they were—as though conducting a fairy symphony—and the smoke behind him, it looked to Sarah like he was about to jump into the water. She concentrated on him and imagined his dive, just how it would look, how the water would splash up behind his tiny heels and the birds all around would rise and circle in the air, the seagulls’ cries echoing over the park. After a while, they would settle down again, unperturbed by the empty pedestal.
When she looked back at Mark and Amelia, they were standing, deep in conversation. The squirrels were gone.
“So,” she said, approaching. “I see you two have moved on to more important things.”
Mark looked away and Amelia said, “Why are you being like this?”
Sarah was surprised at her answer. “Ask your father,” she said and turned to walk alone down the path.
She was still in the front yard when Amelia came home. She was on her second rake, the first’s handle having splintered. Even in her state, she recognized the agony on Amelia’s face, her usual protective distance uprooted by fear and confusion.
Sarah stopped. She wanted to help her. “Amelia,” she said. “It’s okay.”
“Right, Mom. That’s great. Will you come inside now?”
“I’m just finishing here.”
“Mom, you’re done. What are you doing?” Her eyes were red, filling with tears. The bushes on either side of the front door were smashed in sections, holes where thick needles had been. Many of the smaller branches hung down, broken, showing splinters of pulpy white underbark. Trails of leaves ornamented the yard, some of them leading across the driveway and onto the neighbor’s grass.
“Oh, sweetie,” Sarah started. She took a step toward her, but Amelia took a step back. Sarah dropped the rake.
She leaned over to pick it up, reaching out to balance herself on the ground. “The leaves were, you know, stuck and—”
“Okay, please come inside, Mom. You can tell me there.”
“Amelia, you’re overreacting. If you’d just listen—”
“Listen? To what? You’re hitting the bushes with a rake, the yard is a mess. Were you trying to rake the leaves into the gutter? Because if you were, Mom, you missed. The Mallons aren’t going to be very happy.”
“Don’t worry about it, sweetie.”
“Don’t call me that! I hate it. No one calls me that except you.”
“I’m sorry,” Sarah answered. Now that she was no longer raking, she was cold. She didn’t have on a coat. Amelia, perhaps sensing that danger was past, turned violently and went into the house. Sarah followed.
When Amelia ran upstairs, Sarah poured herself another drink. She sipped it standing by the kitchen sink and listened to Amelia getting ready to practice. She was upset, she knew, because it wasn’t like her to practice first. She usually rested or did some homework. She started with scales and they were fierce and fast. Sarah had played the violin as a child so knew enough to marvel at her daughter’s technical ability. She really was so good, Sarah thought. Suddenly she was sad and proud and filled with the desire to tell Amelia that her teacher had said she was good enough to have a concert career if she wanted to. Sarah headed up the stairs.
The door was closed but unlocked and Sarah opened it without knocking. Amelia ignored her. There was a wicker chair in the corner of the room, and Sarah aimed for it and sat down as quietly as she could. When the chair creaked loudly, she grinned. “Sorry,” she whispered.
Amelia finished her scales and warm-up exercises and started thumbing through a book of music. It was clear she wanted Sarah to leave.
“Could I just stay a little bit longer? I really like to listen to you. You’re so good.”
Amelia looked at her. “Mom, don’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“Mom, stop.”
“Sweet—” she clapped a hand over her mouth. “I don’t understand,” she said through her fingers.
Amelia glanced around her room as though searching for assistance, then looked down at her violin. “Will you just go away, please?”
“Why? I promise to be quiet. You won’t even know I’m here.”
“Oh, right. I can smell you.”
This was new territory and it surprised them both. Generally they stayed away from the particulars. Amelia stared, waiting, Sarah knew, to see if she would be angry. But she wasn’t. It was okay, she thought.
“Yes,” she said, swallowing hard. “I know it. But can I tell you why I think I had a drink tonight?”
“No, it’s okay,” Amelia said quickly. Then they were both quiet and ashamed. The gray light through the blue curtains filled the room. Amelia moved slightly and turned on her music lamp. After a moment, she picked up her violin. She began a slow piece by Satie that Sarah had told Amelia she loved. It was not something new. It was a piece Amelia had already performed. This was a reprieve, Sarah knew, and started to cry, not for the music, but for the time when Amelia would no longer be willing to give her such gifts.