“You’ve worn it for thirty-four years,” I told her. “You’ve loved it more than I did. She would have liked you.”

She shook her head. “It’s yours. You have to take it.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

We stood there for a long time. People were walking past us with their carts, looking at us like we were two old women having a breakdown over a bag of apples.

I reckon we were. I reached out and closed the locket for her. The snap was loud in the quiet between us. I pressed my hand against her knuckles to keep her from opening it again.

“It’s not my mother’s anymore,” I said. “It’s yours.”

I walked away then. I left her standing by the apples. I didn’t look back, even though every part of me wanted to turn around and grab it one last time. I walked to my car, and I sat in the driver’s seat for a long time before I could turn the key. I felt empty, but it was a good kind of empty. It was like I had finally let go of that bus stop in 1968.

She caught up to me just as I was pulling out of the lot. She tapped on my window. I rolled it down. She didn’t say anything. She just reached in and placed the locket on the dashboard. Then she turned and walked back to the store without saying a word. I looked at the gold sitting there on the plastic. It looked small. It looked like just a piece of metal. But when I picked it up, it was warm from her skin. I put it on. It felt heavy. It felt like coming home. I’m still wearing it. She lost a piece of her life today, I know that. But she gave me my mother back. And I think, in the end, that was the only way it could have ever finished.