“Of your mother. Of the love Rose gave her. Of the love you gave her. It was foolish and wrong.”
Emma considered that.
“That’s weird.”
“Yes,” my mother said. “It was.”
Noah nodded as if this confirmed a theory.
“Adults are confusing.”
My mother’s eyes flicked to me.
“Yes,” she said softly. “They are.”
Later, after she left, Emma came to me while I washed syrup from a bowl.
“I don’t forgive her yet,” she said.
“You don’t have to.”
“But I don’t hate her today.”
“That’s okay too.”
Emma leaned against me.
“Is that the happy ending?”
I looked around.
At Noah showing Tyler how to mark weather patterns in the journal. At Dad hanging a crooked shelf while Cassandra told him it leaned left. At the wall of paper roses, every name bright against cream paint. At Grandma Rose’s rocking chair beside the window, empty and somehow not empty at all.
