This one is for my mother. She held our whole family together with her own hands — working, carrying, asking for almost nothing in return. I gave up what a boy gives up to stand beside her, and ours was a closeness that never needed words. More than anything, I wanted her to reach the far side of all that work and find a little happiness waiting there. She didn't get the chance. When she died, I grieved for more than a year — not because grief is long, but because she deserved so much more than the life she was given. Beloved Boy comes from that place: the love, and the loss, that never quite leaves.