Melissa was asking me to know the woman who had survived.
Those were not necessarily the same thing.
Before leaving, Ava tugged Melissa toward the oak tree behind the market.
“There,” she said. “Grandpa told me you used to swing here.”
Only a piece of rope remained from the old tire swing.
Melissa touched the bark.
“I remember Mom.”
My heart jumped.
“What about her?”
Melissa closed her eyes.
“Not here.”
“No?”
“In a room.”
“A hospital?”
“I think so.”
She looked at me.
“She was wearing the green scarf.”
I knew the scarf.
Dorothy wore it during the months after Melissa’s funeral because someone had told her green symbolized hope.
That afternoon, Calvin and I returned to Dorothy’s notebook.
Two pages after the St. Anne entry, we found an address.
CAROL BENNETT.
I searched online.
A Carol Bennett, retired registered nurse, still lived thirty miles away.
I called.
An elderly woman answered.
When I said Dorothy Grant’s name, she went silent.
“Oh,” she finally whispered. “I’ve wondered about her for years.”
We met the next morning at a small café.
Carol Bennett arrived carrying a canvas folder.
“I was a charge nurse at St. Anne’s,” she explained.
Seven years earlier, a patient had been transferred there from River County.
The paperwork listed her as an unidentified woman in her early thirties.
She rarely spoke.
One afternoon, Carol saw a newspaper story about Melissa’s memorial fundraiser.
The photograph caught her attention.
“I thought they looked similar.”
So she called the number listed for Grant Family Market.
Dorothy answered.
“My wife came to see her?”
“Twice.”
I could barely move.
“Did Melissa recognize her?”
“Not clearly.”
Carol looked toward her coffee.
“The first time, your daughter became agitated—not frightened, exactly. Emotional. She kept staring at Mrs. Grant’s scarf.”
“The green one.”
“Yes.”
Dorothy sat beside Melissa for almost an hour.
She talked about the market.
About Ava.
About a childhood dog named Buttons.
At one point Melissa squeezed her hand.
“Why didn’t Dorothy tell me?”
“I asked her that.”
Carol looked directly at me.
“She said she couldn’t give you hope without proof.”
That sounded exactly like Dorothy.
Love had made her brave.
Love had also made her cautious.
“She requested testing,” Carol continued. “But the facility couldn’t authorize it without the proper process. We were trying to coordinate with the county.”
