Chapter 14 - SOPHIE GOT HER GRANDPARENTS BACKEleanor and Jack returned slowly.
I apologized before asking them for anything.
“I believed messages you never sent.”
Eleanor cried.
“I should have driven to the house.”
“You shouldn’t have needed to.”
We both had our guilt.
Neither made Sophie carry it.
The first visit lasted two hours.
Eleanor brought no pile of gifts.
Just Anna’s old recipe box.
She asked Sophie:
“Would you like this someday?”
Sophie said:
“Can I have it now?”
Eleanor laughed.
“Yes.”
Inside were handwritten recipe cards.
Pancakes.
Apple pie.
A terrible tuna casserole I remembered Anna making once before we agreed never again.
Sophie kept all of them.
Even the tuna.
Then she asked:
“Is Vanessa mad if I have Mommy’s stuff?”
Silence.
I answered:
“Vanessa does not decide what you remember.”
That became another rule.
Anna’s photograph returned to Sophie’s room.
Not shrine-sized.
Not hidden.
Normal.
I realized that was what Vanessa had never understood.
Anna’s memory did not need to shrink for new love to exist.
Only insecure love demands empty space.
The mansion sold ten months later.
I bought a four-bedroom house in Bethesda.
Beautiful.
Expensive.
Not a palace.
May you like
Sophie chose her room because it had a window seat.
I chose it because there were no locks on interior doors.
