"For how long?" Mia said.
"7 months," Connie said. "I've been carrying it for 7 months. Waiting."
Mia looked at the worn ribbon in her left fist. The one that had traveled the whole distance. Every morning for 7 months. The dining hall floor. Foss's jacket pocket. Her palm, right now.
She looked at the new one in Connie's open hand. The one that had waited three years in a canvas bag for a moment that almost didn't come.
She held out her right hand.
Connie placed the new ribbon in it.
Then Connie reached up, with the hands that had been doing this since before Mia was born, and gently untied the ribbon currently in her braid. The one she had tied in that morning in the mirror, the way her mother had always meant to do it. She held it carefully. The way you hold something that has done important work.
Then she took the new ribbon and tied it in. Her fingers remembering the motion without needing to think. The way the body remembers what the heart has done many times.
She stepped back and looked.
The braid was shorter than it used to be. Sloan's scissors had taken those inches, and they were not coming back. But the ribbon was at the end of it. Navy blue. The same shade. The same intention.
"There," Connie said.
Mia looked at her grandmother. 72 years old, white hair and steady hands, and a way of standing that took up exactly the space she intended, and no more. The woman who had built a gym in her backyard when the world told her she had no business on any mat, anywhere. Who had trained Sandra. Who had trained Mia. Who had driven down from Delwood today to sit in the back row, where she could see her granddaughter's face. The same back row where she had not quite been able to sit 22 years ago.
She was here now. Both of them were here now.
Mia looked down at her two hands. Left hand: the worn ribbon, the one that had been through everything. Right hand... the one now in her hair, placed there by her grandmother's hands. The one Sandra had never gotten to use.
She closed both fists gently.
"Nana," she said.
"Yeah?"
"Thank you."
Connie looked at her for a long moment. And for once, the careful steadiness she always maintained allowed something through. Not a lot. Just a flicker. The cost of seven months, visible for one second in her eyes, before she brought it back.