“Making a list.”
“Of what?”
Julianne looked at him, this serious boy who had learned too early to read rooms.
“Possibilities,” she said.
He climbed into the chair beside her. “Can I add one?”
“Of course.”
He thought hard. “A room where Lily can’t touch my stuff.”
Julianne laughed softly. “That is a very important possibility.”
Lily appeared in the doorway, offended by instinct. “I heard my name.”
“Good,” Theo said. “You need to hear about boundaries.”
Julianne laughed again, fuller this time.
The sound surprised all three of them.
Then Lily laughed too. Theo tried not to, failed, and soon they were all laughing in Mira’s kitchen while dawn slowly brightened the windows.
It was not a perfect beginning.
But it was theirs.
In Chicago, however, another truth was beginning to move.
Warren’s apology had opened something Elaine could not close. She spent the week going through old family albums, seeing Julianne not as the woman who had failed to produce the grandson she wanted, but as the woman who had been present in every meaningful moment.
Julianne holding Elaine’s hand after surgery.
Julianne organizing Warren’s seventieth birthday.
Julianne bringing soup when Roxanne had the flu, even after Roxanne had mocked her cooking.
Julianne standing slightly behind Marcus in nearly every photo, as if she had learned to make herself smaller so he could fill the frame.
Elaine stopped at one picture from six years earlier.
Christmas Eve.
Theo was four. Lily was a baby. Marcus stood by the fireplace looking impatient. Julianne sat on the floor helping Theo unwrap a wooden train set.
In the corner of the photo, Warren’s brother, Arthur, was watching them.
Elaine frowned.
