in bright strips.

Nora walked beside her mother without hurrying, her green vest tucked over one arm, her shoulders no longer curled inward.

At the car, she paused.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Next semester, I still want nursing.”

Mara smiled.

“I know.”

Nora looked back through the glass doors at the registers, the customers, the fluorescent lights, the place where she had been cornered and the place where she had refused to disappear.

“I think,” she said, “I might be good at staying calm when people need me.”

Mara opened the passenger door and watched her daughter step into the sunlight.

“You already are,” she said.

And this time, when the automatic doors sighed behind them, it sounded less like a store closing and more like something finally letting go.