[Reaction.]
She didn't know the memory. This one was foreign, and it was unfamiliar, but the woman was beautiful; she reminded Hannah of her mother. The woman didn't look like Hannah's mother, but she had the same kind of laughing and timeless beauty, and Hannah looked at the little boy with the somber eyes, and she recognized Dietre. Dietre, who she'd just met, and who she hoped and hoped and hoped would make Hugh happy. Dietre, who seemed delicate, and who she remembered beneath the big top and playing the piano with gifted fingers that seemed to have a life all their own.
And she understood that this was where he'd learned, and that made it even more special, and the music played. The music was houses with souls and bellies, and it was collected postcards, and it was old shawls kept in cedar chests that held onto an old, old perfume that belonged to a long, long gone mother. Not her mother, and not these things, but it felt the same to watch, and it was as if her face was pressed to a pane of glass, as if she was watching a mother and son through a window gone clean and clear.
The woman smiled, and the woman kissed Dietre's small cheek, and Hannah wondered how many tiny moments made up forever. And as the memory ended, she was still wondering, and maybe those fleeting things, those fleeting moments, were building blocks and foundations. She blinked slowly back into the present, into now, into this place and the people and the clocks.