Jo added a photograph to the Revelry’s lobby wall: the image of her mother and Ami McKellen singing together onstage “for one night only,” a picture discovered during a hazy summer day of sorting boxes. She remembered her mother asking how to forgive the futures she never became, and Jo concluded there was nothing to forgive because her mother lived fully in the present.

Jo placed the photo centrally, inadvertently covering Roman Fell’s brooding image without caring. On slow days, she returned to the lobby to look at the photo when grief threatened her memory of her mother’s laugh, smell, or smile.

Jo recalled finding a mixtape labeled “#1900” in her mother’s handwriting while cleaning out the box office the summer after her mother’s death. There was no note or track list, but Jo knew what songs would be on it and kept an old cassette player backstage to play it loudly.

Whenever Jo listened, the music filled her until she felt transported to a bright, sunlit past where her mother waited, letting her spread her arms and be carried by memory. The chapter closed with Jo’s inner vision returning to that place “like magic,” underscoring how the mixtape anchors her ongoing connection to her mother.