She called her mother from the faculty housing parking lot the next morning, sitting in her car with the engine running for warmth, and told her she was accepting the fellowship.
Her mother, Elena Cielo, was sixty-one, a retired music teacher who lived in the small Oregon coastal town where Mara had grown up, in the house where Mara had first learned to hear. She received the news with the calm of a person who had been expecting it and was glad.
'Good,' Elena said. 'It's time.'
Mara looked out the windshield at the bare April trees. 'There's a man here,' she said.
A brief pause. Then: 'Tell me.'
She told her. She told her about the faculty lounge in September and the two-hour conversation and the Vietnamese restaurant and the November rain and the score on the kitchen table. She told her about the February morning when he had said I love you and the look on his face when she had said I'm afraid of what that means.
'He sounds like someone who actually sees you,' Elena said.
'He does,' Mara said. 'He's — he pays attention in the way that musicians pay attention. He hears the thing underneath the thing.'
'And he supports you going.'
'He does. He said so very clearly. And also — he said he was afraid that loving me and letting me go were the same act.' She paused. 'Which is possibly the most honest thing anyone has ever said to me.'
Elena was quiet for a moment. 'Is he right?' she said. 'Is it the same act?'
Mara looked at the bare trees. 'I don't know,' she said. 'I don't think it has to be. But I'm not sure I know how to prevent it from being.'
'What does your work need?' Elena asked.
'The fellowship.'
'And what do you need?'
A long pause. 'Both,' Mara said. 'I need both.'
Elena said: 'Then that's what you're going to try to have. And if it's not possible to have both, you'll find that out. But you don't know yet.'
Mara leaned her head back against the headrest. The morning light was cold and clear and the trees were doing what April trees do, the very first suggestion of green at the tips of the branches.
'I keep thinking about the elegy,' Mara said. 'About the fact that I found the ending here. With him. He said something about endings being openings and I went home and wrote for four hours and I found it.'
'Then he's already in the work,' Elena said. 'That means something.'
Mara closed her eyes. 'Yes,' she said. 'It does.'