3
“Rosie!” I call, peering into the living room, where I find her, book in hand, sitting in her chair by the fireplace, the
embers glowing orange and crimson in the dim light. Before she can get up, I rush to her side, immediately noticing the wrinkles
around her eyes and the pronounced hollows of her cheeks. She turned seventy last month; my time away has aged her—perhaps
us both.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispers, pulling me to her chest. “I’ve missed you so much.” Her eyes are glossy in the firelight.
“I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long,” I say, my heart contracting.
“No apologies,” Rosie says, holding her hand to her heart. “For me, you’ve never left.”
I nod, sinking into the overstuffed chair beside her as I watch the flames dance in the fireplace.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.
I sigh. “About Kevin?”
Rosie nods.
“I don’t know if there’s anything to say,” I begin. “Just that I feel shell-shocked and stupid. We were together for two years.
I thought this was... it .”
“I know,” she replies. “These feelings are real, dear, but they’ll pass in time. Someday you might even feel grateful for
all of this.”
“Grateful?” I shrug, recalling the look on Kevin’s face last night, the humiliation seeping from my pores. “I don’t know about that.” I let out a long sigh, burying my face in my hands. “How did I get this so wrong? I thought we wanted the same things.”
Rosie shifts in her chair. “Honey, you can’t approach love like a business plan.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what Frankie said.” I sigh. “Guilty as charged, I guess.”
She smiles, setting her book aside as I eye the spine.
“Rosie!” I exclaim, laughing for the first time in twenty-four hours. “ Fifty Shades of Grey? ”
She shrugs, her chin-length gray hair thinner than I remember. “Well, I’m not getting any younger. I figured I should know
what all the fuss was about before it’s too late!”
“So?” I crack a sly smile. “Is it... good?”
She grins, pausing for a second. “Well, I wouldn’t call it great literature, but... interesting ? Yes, indeed.”
Rosie and I have always shared a love of reading. While my apartment in San Francisco may be sparsely furnished, books are
stacked precariously high on my bedside table, just as they’re piled up in stacks in Rosie’s living room.
“Tell me, did Kevin like to read?” Rosie asks, eying me curiously.
I pause for a moment, recalling him—headphones on, iPad in hand—binge-watching shows on Netflix while I kept my nose buried
in a book. “No, actually.”
“Hmm,” Rosie replies. “You used to say you could never be with someone who didn’t love books.”
I look away wistfully.
“Your ‘business plan’ was flawed.”
“More like doomed,” I reply, eying the shelf on the far wall. “I see you’re still collecting your rocks.”
“Crystals, dear,” she says, nodding proudly. “They’re quite powerful, you know, and healing.” While Rosie and I are similar
in most ways, I didn’t inherit her affinity for all things woo-woo.
“Pull down that pink one, top right?” she continues.
On my tiptoes, I reach for the stone, feeling its coolness against my skin, before handing it to Rosie. “No,” she says, quickly. “I want you to hold on to it.”
I look down at the square-shaped pale pink stone in my hand. It’s almost iridescent in the dim glow of the firelight.
“She’s quietly wise, this one,” Rosie muses.
I’m not sure if all crystal lovers refer to their rocks as “she,” or if it’s just a Rosie thing.
“And incredibly powerful. Rose quartz is one of the most beneficial crystals for the heart. It has a way of bringing about
harmonious love.”
“Harmonious love, huh?” I say, a little sarcastically, setting the rock on the table between us. “I love you, Rosie, but I
think it would take a truckload of rose quartz to fix my love life.”
“Why not keep it for a while?” She grins. “You’ll see.”
“Okay,” I concede, but only because I know it’ll make her happy.
Rosie’s wise eyes search my face. She’s always been able to read me, sometimes eerily so. “Let me ask you a question,” she
begins again. “How did Kevin make you feel , I mean, when you were in his presence?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve never really thought about that.”
“Well, you should, because it’s everything. It’s how I knew about Bill. With him, it all just felt... right . We fit.”
“Let me guess,” I say with a tinge of sarcasm. “Like two puzzle pieces?”
“Well, yes, actually.”
I roll my eyes.
She looks toward the darkness outside the window where the waves crash onto the shore, saying their good nights. Unlike me,
Rosie has known love—true love. As I watch her smiling peacefully, I wonder if she’s thinking of him.
Though Bill died shortly after I was born, Rosie’s vivid descriptions made me feel as if I’d always known him: the fly fishing tackle box in the mudroom, his raspy voice, love for shepherd’s pie. They loved to laugh, Rosie told me, but especially to dance. I liked to imagine the two of them in the living room, feet stepping in time to an old jazz record—Rosie squealing with delight when Bill dipped her in his arms. After his death, she never remarried, never even dated. When I once asked her why, she told me that she didn’t need to, that her heart was already full.
She pats my arm, sensing my disquiet. “You’ll find your way, honey.”
I think of my mother and the revolving door of boyfriends and romantic disappointments—her version of the “conveyor belt,”
I guess—and I can’t help but wonder if I’m destined for the same parade of disillusionment.
Rosie smiles again, her eyes big and wise. “Remember, the heart is a muscle you must flex. It takes practice.”
“I don’t know,” I reply, unsure. “Maybe I’m just destined to be alone. It would be a lot easier.”
“And a lot lonelier,” she counters.
I can’t help but wonder if Rosie’s happy living alone on this island by the sea, puttering around the house with her crystals
and her memories.
“Well, I should be getting to bed,” she says with a yawn. “I put fresh sheets on your bed, and there are towels in the bathroom.”
I give Rosie a hug. “Thanks for... everything.”
“Good night, dear,” she finally says, her voice cracking a little as she cradles my face in her hands, eyes a little misty.
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
I sit in silence for a long moment, soaking up the comfort of home as the fireplace’s final embers crackle and spark, glowing
red and orange. When my gaze turns to my mother’s bedroom door across the room, memories rush back, hitting me in rapid fire.
I’m thirty-five, but I might as well be ten years old again, hair in braids. Fighting back tears, I walk ahead, across the
room, placing my hand on the doorknob, cold to the touch.
Inside, the coverlet is tucked tight over the empty bed. The only remnants of her are a cardboard box filled with tubes of dried-up paint on the floor and two art easels perched against the far wall, one holding a landscape painting, the other an in-progress, but not-quite-finished still life—a ceramic pitcher nestled beside two ripe pears. I walk closer, unable to take my eyes off the canvas, the scene so simple, but somehow majestic. I hear my mother’s voice in my mind. “Sometimes the most beautiful things in life are right in front of our eyes. We just need to learn to see them.”
I sigh, opening the top drawer of the dresser and lifting a moth-eaten wool sweater. I hold it up to my face, breathing in
its scent, though my mother’s essence has long since disappeared. Feeling the heaviness of this moment—and of the last twenty-four
hours—I turn to the bedside table, where I notice a framed photo beside the lamp. I reach for it, blowing dust from its rim.
There I am—only three, maybe four—sitting on my mother’s lap, looking up at her with wide eyes. I’m holding my little stuffed
bunny, the one I loved but tragically left behind in some apartment. By the time I realized it was gone, it was too late to
turn back. Snowball. His name was Snowball .
For the first time, I realize how expertly I’ve hidden away the past, compartmentalized all these painful memories into the
far corners of my mind, locking the dead bolt and throwing away the key. But now the door is open—wide open—and it’s all here,
vying for my attention.
I see it, and yet I don’t want to see it: how I’m allergic to unchartered territory and bristle at the unknown; the way I
buckle when things don’t go according to plan, maybe because Mom never had a plan.
I close the door behind me as if to shut it all away again, exhaling deeply as I wander to the kitchen, reaching for a bottle of pinot grigio chilling in the fridge. Looking for a corkscrew, I rifle through a drawer beneath the counter, where I notice an old brass key affixed to a tag that reads guesthouse .
The little cottage on the edge of the property has long since been locked, especially after I snuck inside with my high school
boyfriend, Mike, and it became the site of my first official (braces-free) kiss. Rosie of course had found us, and from then
on the guesthouse remained off-limits, and, as I got older, just a distant memory.
Overcome with curiosity, I tuck the key in my pocket, uncork the wine, filling a glass to the brim before finding a coat hanging
on a hook beside the back door. Outside, the full moon dangles low on the horizon, piercing through a channel of incoming
clouds. It lights up the bay like a superpowered floodlight, casting ambient light on the edge of the property, where the
guesthouse sits, perched on the cliffside.
The breeze whistles through the fir trees, jostling the wind chimes on Rosie’s back porch as I make my way across the lawn,
dodging raindrops with each step. I follow the gravel path to the door and peer through the window into the dark space before
finally inserting the key into the lock. The hinges groan, as if releasing decades of pent-up tension. Brushing away a cobweb,
I step inside. There’s just enough moonlight to make out my surroundings: a desk; a twin bed, neatly made; a painting on the
wall of waves crashing onto the shore.
It feels strange to be here again in this forbidden space—strange, but also weirdly comforting. I place my wineglass on the
desk, then extract the rose quartz from my pocket, blowing away a thick layer of dust from the nightstand. I set it beside
Rosie’s collection of sparkly crystals and found treasures from the shore.
I’ve just washed up here, too, and I feel suddenly weary as I sit down on the old bed, the coils beneath me stiff and springy. The wind howls outside the cottage as I rest my head on the pillow. I know I should get back, but the trek across the lawn feels as daunting as traversing the Saharan desert without a camel—or water. Instead, I pull the ancient patchwork quilt over my body. What would be the harm in resting here, just for a little while? Eyelids heavy, I shift to my side, yawning, as I pull the blanket over my tired body. Rain pelts the roof overhead, and it sounds just like a lullaby.