The rooms I thought belonged to strangers.
They had never been entirely strange.
And on the final Saturday, when Margaret told me to come without my cleaning supplies, I thought she intended to give me money.
Instead, she gave me something far more dangerous.
The truth.
And the truth did what truth always does.
First, it destroyed the house you thought you lived in.
Then, if you were brave enough to remain standing among the wreckage, it gave you the chance to build another one.
Years later, when Willa became a registered nurse, she chose St.
Anne’s for her first job.
The maternity wing had long since been rebuilt.
On her first day, she sent me a photograph from the hospital entrance.
She was wearing blue scrubs.
Behind her, mounted near the doors, was a bronze memorial plaque honoring the nurses involved in the 1988 fire.
For decades, the plaque
