loans and the encouraging words: “You’re so smart, sweetheart. You’ll have no trouble finding scholarships.”
She worked three jobs through school. Barista from five until nine in the morning, tutor from three in the afternoon until six, freelance coding late into the night. Four hours of sleep a night for three years. She graduated summa cum laude from her nursing program with eighty thousand dollars in debt and no one from her family at the ceremony.
The only person who never made her feel like a burden was her grandmother, Lillian Price.
Lillian lived alone in a small brick house on Elm Street in Norristown, Pennsylvania — two bedrooms, one bathroom, a porch swing that creaked in the wind. Starting at twenty-three, Wendy drove forty minutes each way every Saturday to bring groceries, check her blood pressure, and sit on that swing while Lillian talked about everything and nothing.
Lillian never
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