Chapter 15 - The Bracelet Lucy Chose for Herself
A year after I opened the linen cabinet, Lucy turned nine.
We held her birthday party at a small park near Cabin John.
No mansion.
No formal dining room.
Pizza.
Cupcakes.
Ten children running between picnic tables.
Susan and Robert came.
My sister Caroline came.
Richard did not.
That was the arrangement.
Lucy knew he had asked nothing from her for months.
She also knew she was allowed to change her mind someday without changing it today.
After everyone left, we carried gifts back to the townhouse.
Lucy disappeared into her bedroom.
A few minutes later she returned.
The bracelet was around her wrist.
Daniel’s bracelet.
The repaired clasp caught the afternoon light.
I smiled.
“You ready for that?”
She shrugged.
“I just wanted to wear it.”
No ceremony.
No symbolic speech.
Exactly as it should be.
Later we unpacked another box from the storage unit.
Inside were two photographs.
One showed Daniel holding newborn Lucy.
The other showed Richard standing behind her bicycle while she screamed with laughter.
Lucy placed both on her bookshelf.
Side by side.
I did not move them.
That evening Susan called to ask whether Lucy might want to spend a weekend with them at their house near Annapolis sometime before Thanksgiving.
I told her I would ask.
Not decide.
Lucy was coloring at the kitchen counter when I mentioned it.
“Would you want to stay with Grandma Susan and Grandpa Robert sometime?”
She kept coloring.
“Maybe.”
“Okay.”
Then she looked at her bracelet.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think Richard still has the picture from when I learned to ride my bike?”
I stopped.
“I don’t know.”
She nodded slowly.
For months, she had refused even to hear his name unless necessary.
Now she was asking about a memory.
I didn’t turn it into more than it was.
“Would you like me to find out?”
Lucy thought for a long time.
Then she went back to coloring.
“Not yet.”
I kissed the top of her head.
“Okay.”
A year earlier, Richard had locked my daughter behind a door because she would not give him the answer he wanted.
May you like
Now every important door in her life opened the same way.
Only when she chose.
