Sublime

anthropomorphically.”

It is the only memory I have of my mother and so golden that I am almost sure I have made it up.

in Mia’s accepting presence she’d become curious and kind and open, as if under a magic spell. She had felt, finally, as if she could speak without immediately bumping into the hard shell of her sheltered life, as if she suddenly saw that the solid walls penning her in were actually bars, with spaces between them wide enough to slip through.

Here was a repository of a woman’s knowledge, collected and passed on.

“He’s not a familiar,” Franny said. “He’s a foundling.”

How could I trick her into aligning her youth with my decrepitude?