ballroom laughed.
I laughed too.
Then I knelt beside her.
“No.”
I brushed a strand of hair from her face.
“I’m just trying to be kind.”
The governor nodded.
“And that’s exactly why people remember you.”
For the rest of the evening, something strange happened.
People stopped asking what I did for a living.
They stopped caring that I worked at a diner.
They stopped looking past me.
Instead, they asked about the hospital.
The children.
The volunteer work.
Emma.
For the first time, I wasn’t being judged by what
