Chapter 16 #2
“One day, after Dad died—maybe six months or so—Gillian took Grace and me into the bookstore and said we could pick any book we wanted.” Annie paused, leaning against the counter.
“But I couldn’t pick. I wanted them all.
But your mom suggested The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Do you know that one?”
“Sure I do,” Dorian said. “My mother loved that book.”
“She said she had a feeling it might be just the book for me—for what I was going through,” Annie said.
I’d never heard this story before. I knew it was Annie’s favorite book.
I knew how many times she’d read it and how often I’d found her curled in bed with it long after she should have been asleep.
But I had not known Dorian’s mother had chosen it for her.
I had not known that, six months after Jon died, when I was still moving through the world in a daze, someone else had looked at my daughter and seen exactly what she needed.
The story of Edward Tulane was about a beautiful china rabbit who believed himself above love.
His was a long, strange journey through the hands of people who loved him, lost him, broke him, found him, named him.
Again and again, his heart was asked to open, and, again and again, the price of opening was pain.
No wonder Annie had loved it.
No wonder Dorian’s mother had chosen it for her.
It was a children’s book, yet it told the truth about love and loss in a way that a child could bear. Love might not keep you safe. Being loved might not keep someone from leaving. A heart could break and still, somehow, learn to choose love again.
“And she was right,” Annie said. “I read it over and over. It wasn’t until I started working at the bookstore that it occurred to me she’d given it to me on purpose. That she knew about my dad.”
“It’s a small town,” I said, voice tight. “Everyone knew.”
Dorian didn’t say anything, just listened.
Annie continued, not looking at either of us, almost as if she were talking to herself out loud.
“Now that I’m working at Ink & Anchor, I understand how important it is that people find just the book they need at that moment in their life.
It’s a profound job, you know? And all those people Mrs. Flynn helped find books?
That’s like her legacy. She may be gone physically but she’s still here.
In every book she suggested that had an impact on someone.
Like me and Edward. And now I get to maybe do that for someone else.
The job feels important. And it makes me feel important. ”
I fought tears while simultaneously marveling at the wisdom of my daughter. She was so smart. So mature and wise. How had it happened that she’d become this nearly grown person from the tiny girl in pigtails who asked for a bunny pancake?
“Thank you for telling me that.” Dorian eyes glistened with tears and his voice wobbled when he said, “To hear a story about my mother—one like that—it means a lot.” He paused, wiping under his damp cheeks with the back of his hand.
“She would have been humbled to hear you call her work a legacy. You know, she never thought of it that way. She just loved books and she loved people. It gave her great joy to find just the right book for someone.”
“She did that for me too,” I said, before I could talk myself out of sharing my Maureen Flynn story.
Annie turned to me. “She did?”
I nodded, my fingers tightening around the stem of my wineglass. “About a year after your dad died. I went into the bookstore looking for something. I don’t even remember what. A birthday gift, maybe. A card. Maybe attempting to be normal instead of how I felt inside, which was far from normal.”
Dorian leaned back against the counter, his expression open and quiet.
“Your mother asked how I was. Not in that way people did then, where they tilted their heads and already looked sorry before I answered. But Maureen asked as if it were possible that I was all right. Or that I would be. I told her I hadn’t been able to read since I lost my husband.
Just came right out of my mouth. She squeezed my arm and said she had just the book to get me out of a reading slump.
She left for a moment and returned with The Enchanted April. Do you know it?”
“Of course,” Dorian said. “My mother loved that one too.”
I remembered the cover—flowers and the promise of light. At the time, it had almost offended me.
“What’s it about?” Annie asked.
“It’s about four women who rent a castle in Italy for the month of April,” I said.
“They’re unhappy in different ways. Lonely.
Tired. Shut down. And then this place begins to work on them.
The gardens, the sea, the wisteria, the warmth.
Nothing dramatic happens, which I appreciated.
No one is rescued. No one is cured. They simply begin to soften. ”
The word caught in my throat.
Softening had felt impossible then. Dangerous, even.
I had made myself hard on purpose. Hard got Annie to school.
Hard paid the bills. Hard opened the gallery and answered questions and stood in line at the grocery store while people pretended not to stare.
Hard kept me from exploding into an enormous ball of rage and grief.
And, after a time, it had become a habit to be hard, unreachable. But I hadn’t always been that way.
Maureen Flynn, with her soft cardigan and knowing eyes, had not handed me a book about grief. She had handed me a book about spring and flowers and reinvention.
“I asked her, ‘why this one?’ And she said the book had reminded her—at a time when she really needed reminding—that spring comes again, even after the darkest and coldest of winters.”
Dorian dabbed at his eyes with a kitchen towel.
I looked down into my glass. “She also said, ‘I lost my husband too and raised a child alone. Give yourself a little grace. A little kindness.’”
The sauce simmered its low, steady bubble on the stove.
“She was right. The book got me out of my reading drought. And it didn’t make me feel better exactly.
That would be too simple. But it made me remember that I had once loved beautiful things without guilt.
Flowers. Light. Color. A good cup of coffee in the morning.
The way clay feels before it becomes anything.
It helped me to understand I could still love things without it being a betrayal to Jon.
I was still here. Alive. Interested in things.
That’s when I started my garden. Yes, it was April of that spring.
I planted everything I could get my hands on.
And now, I have this beautiful sanctuary that reminds me how lovely the world can be and that grief and beauty can exist at the same time.
” I looked toward the window, where evening had begun to gather in the garden beyond his kitchen. “I’ve never told anyone that story.”
No one spoke for a moment.
Then Annie reached for my hand across the counter. Her palm was warm and dry. “Mrs. Flynn gave me Edward and gave you April.”
“And my garden,” I said.
“She would have loved knowing that,” Dorian said.
“She probably did know,” Annie said. “Bookstore people know everything.”
“She was always empathetic and compassionate toward anyone who walked into her shop,” Dorian said. “And you’re right, she touched countless lives with her thoughtfulness. Thank you for telling me how she touched your lives in such a meaningful way. You’ve given me a great gift.”
I watched him standing in his mother’s kitchen with her recipe simmering on the stove, next to my darling girl. And I thought, this is exactly where I’m supposed to be. Maybe his mother was up there, still guiding us toward the light and each other.
“You’re reminding me I have big shoes to fill,” Dorian said.
Annie smiled. “But Dorian, you did that for us too—the Didion book was just what we needed. So you’re carrying on her work.”
“I guess I am,” Dorian said. “Someone should tell Poe that.”
We all chuckled, and then I offered to set the table
“You did say a perfectly set table made you happy,” Dorian said.
“I did?” I asked.
“I put it in your profile, remember?” Annie asked.
“Well, she’s right. I do love a perfectly set table,” I said. “What do you have for me to work with?”
That seemed to stump Dorian. “Um, candles?”
I nodded, already designing the table in my head. “Yes, candles are good. I noticed some mason jars in the laundry room. I’ll use those for flowers. With your permission, I’ll snip some flowers from your garden.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Dorian said, looking a little frightened.
“Great. I’ll need scissors or clippers. And do you have cloth napkins?”
Annie giggled. “I did not lie on her profile, right?”
I ignored her, taking scissors from Dorian.
“I’ll get some napkins out of the pantry,” Dorian said. “I think I have something in there that would satisfy an artist.”
“I can make them work,” I said, already headed out the door to the garden.
His rose garden was mature, probably planted by his mother. I clipped four pale pink roses, then snipped rosemary from a large bush near the porch. Lastly, I chose a few sprigs of lavender, figuring they would add a gorgeous scent to the table.
Back inside, I grabbed the mason jars and arranged the flowers in the laundry room before bringing them out to the table. Dorian had found three linen napkins in a pale pink and a bag of votive candles.
“The napkins were my mother’s, obviously,” Dorian said, chuckling.
“They’re perfect,” I said.
I went to work and soon we had a lovely table with the bouquets, strategically scattered votive candles, and Maureen’s pink napkins that matched the roses so well it was as if I’d planned the color scheme.
Seeing three plates at the table, instead of the two we normally had, unsettled me, gave me almost a homesick feeling. As if I missed a home I never knew existed.