“I know,” I said. “I built prototypes before we married.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Before that.”
I frowned.
“Iris,” he said softly, “your mother had the original concept.”
The world became very quiet.
“My mother?”
“She was a nurse for twenty years,” he said. “She saw patients suffer through devices that were not designed for the lives they actually lived. She kept notebooks. Sketches. Ideas for a better system. When you were in graduate school, you found one of her old notebooks and improved on it. You didn’t steal from her. She was proud. She used to say the idea had waited for the right hands.”
My throat closed.
My mother.
Quiet, practical, gentle Marion Caldwell, who packed lunches with handwritten notes and worked double shifts without complaint. I had known she was observant. I had known she was compassionate.
