Chapter 31
The car might as well be going in slow motion up the driveway. I’ve been waiting on the porch for the last five minutes, excitement and impatience thrumming through me.
The back doors fly open first.
“Grandma!” one of the twins shouts, Leo, from the length of his hair. Hudson quickly follows, shoving his brother out of the way. I barely have time to brace myself before they crash into me, arms wrapping around my waist.
I laugh, the sound pulled right out of me, and hug them back as tight as I can. “Careful, you’ll knock me over.”
“We’re almost as tall as you now, Grandma!”
“I can tell,” I say, kissing the top of both of their heads.
My oldest granddaughter, Brooke, almost a teenager now, waits behind them.
“Hi sweetie, ”I say, letting go of the boys and pulling her into an equally tight hug.
“I missed you, Grandma.”
Amanda is last, closing the trunk with one hand as she carries bags with the other, her expression already apologetic. “I’m sorry we’re late,” she says. “The kids were being terrors trying to get out the door.”
“We were not,” one twin protests.
“You so were,” Brooke counters, earning a shove from her younger brother.
Amanda smiles, tired and bright all at once, and right now, she’s not a forty-year-old mom of three, or a doctor, or anything, but my baby girl.
“Hi, Mom,” she says, falling into my arms. “How have you been?” She pulls back to look at me. “You seem good. Better than the last time I saw you.”
“That wouldn’t be hard to do, sweetie. I haven’t seen you since Dad’s funeral.”
“Yeah, but even before,” she says, and I can’t deny that. Even though I feel terrible for admitting it, being home again has been good for me.
“Come on,” I say, waving them inside. “Aunt Clara made lemonade. And bought cookies.”
That gets the kids’ attention.
They rush past us, filling the house with laughter. Amanda follows, yelling at them not to run through the house, but I pause on the porch, watching them take over my childhood home with ease.
It’s nice to see the old place alive in a way it hasn’t been in so long.
We head into town on foot, because that’s how you do it in Rosehill. You miss too much from a car.
The twins race ahead, while Amanda walks beside me, taking in the town. Brooke trails behind us, staring down at her phone.
“That’s a clothing shop now, but it used to be a bakery,” I say, nodding toward a brick building with a sleek new sign. “Best cake you’ve ever had. Clara and I would always get our birthday cakes there.”
I point out the old movie theater, closed now, posters fading more and more through the years. The diner being gone is still a sore spot. I can’t help but wonder how Lily felt about that. If she wanted to fight for it the same way…
The twins slow down near the edge of the square. Leo presses his hands to the glass of a stop window, fogging it up with his breath, and Hudson follows.
“Grandma,” Leo says, tugging on my hand. “Is this where you lived when you were our age?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Why’d you come back?” Brooke asks, pocketing her phone. I open my mouth, then close it again. Amanda glances at me, curious too.
“Because Aunt Clara lives here,” I tell them. “And it will always be home.”
We pass through the main square and a stretch of concrete that still makes my chest tighten if I look at it too long. I don’t point it out.
It’s been gone for 40 years, there’s nothing I can do about it now.
“I’m starving, Mom,” Brooke complains, pulling me back to the present.
“You had a snack before we left.”
“There’s a café up ahead. I’ve been there with Clara and Tommy a few times. The food’s good.”
“Can we go to the park after?” The twins ask, pointing at the large playground that was added in recent years, already bouncing on their toes in anticipation.
“It’s up to grandma.”
I nod. “If you still have the energy.”
The café is busier than it usually is, being a Saturday, but we manage to find a table near the back. The kids argue over who gets the chair by the window, but Amanda negotiates peace expertly.
“Do they have anything vegan here?” Brooke asks, scanning the menu.
“I think so,” I tell her. “The people who work here are young hippie types.” The boys laugh while their sister scowls, but I didn’t mean anything by it.
The server comes by, cheerful, but clearly exhausted from the weekend rush. While the twins are busy trying to convince their mom to get two different desserts, my eyes drift toward the front entrance, like a magnet, tugging them exactly where they need to be.
Because that’s when Lily walks in.
She looks beautiful today, in her paint-stained overalls and a bandana over her gray and ginger braids. Amanda is saying something beside me, asking if the fries are good, but the words blur together as Lily pauses inside the door, staring at the crowd with a scowl.
“Grandma?” one of the twins asks. “Are you okay?”
I nod quickly, turning my attention back to my family. “Yes. Just loud in here.”
I stay turned around until the moment I hear her laugh.
My head snaps in that direction automatically, and that time, everyone follows my gaze.
Lily sees me first, giving me a casual smile when our eyes meet, but then her eyes scan the rest of my table. Her smile fades as confusion flashes across her face.
And she’s coming over here.
“Diana,” she says casually, like she’s not about to meet my family for the first time.
“Hi, Lily,” I manage, forcing myself to be normal. “This is my daughter. Amanda. And these are my grandkids, Brooke, Leo, and Hudson.”
Amanda stands, offering a hand without hesitation, a smile blooming on her face. “Oh my gosh, hi. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Lily’s eyebrows lift as she shakes it. “Have you?”
“Oh yeah,” Amanda says, with an easy laugh.
“My middle name is Lily.”
Lily looks back at me, and her face has never been so unreadable. A tension I haven’t felt since I first arrived creeps up between us, threatening to steal my breath.
“That’s…,” she starts, then stops. “That’s nice.”
I can’t get myself to look at her.
This feels too big. Too close to something I’m not allowed to think about. My brain provides images of Lily when I told her I was pregnant. When she held my stomach. When I needed her while I was in the hospital.
Why I gave Amanda her name.
She was gone.
“Well,” Lily says, stuffing her hands into her pockets, “I don’t want to interrupt your lunch.”
“You’re not,” Amanda says, unaware of the tension. “Please, sit with us.”
Lily hesitates, looking at me.
I make myself nod because how could I not?
And just like that, she’s there, sliding into the chair on my other side, close enough that I can feel her arm bumping into mine.
The twins ask her way too many questions that she answers with more patience than I’ve ever seen from her, and soon, Amanda and Brooke are too. Luckily, everyone is too distracted to see the look I must have, seeing her interact with my family…
I’ve never wanted her more.
The boys race to the tall slide the moment we pass the gate, arguing about who’s going first, while Brooke lingers behind like she wants to play, but thinks she’s too old.
Lily walks beside me, close but not touching.
“I didn’t know your family was visiting,” she says, watching them.
“It was a last-minute thing, Amanda didn’t know if she would get the time off, plus I figured you wouldn’t care.”
“I care. I want to meet all of your spawn. Especially the ones you named after me.” She adds with a smirk.
“There’s only the one,” I say with a smile of my own, grateful that the discomfort from earlier has gone away.
“Well, she’s my favorite then.”
We end up pairing off, Amanda with the boys, pushing them on the swings as they laugh and shout, “Higher, Mom!” While Lily and Brooke sit together on the picnic table, talking amongst themselves.
Amanda comes to stand beside me at the edge of the playground, arms crossed loosely. “She’s good with kids,” she says, following my gaze to watch Lily.
“She always was.”
When Brooke points toward the swings, Lily goes with her without hesitation, obliging when the boys recruit her to push them.
“You didn’t tell me she still lived in Rosehill.”
“I didn’t know she still did.”
Amanda hums. “Did grandma and grandpa?”
I nod, fighting the anger bubbling up when I remember what they kept from me. My mother was… my mother, but I trusted Dad, and Clara, and I still don’t get why they would let me suffer.
“They all let me think she was gone, when she was right here the whole time.”
Lily catches my eye from across the playground, smiling brighter than I’ve seen since we were kids, and I have to fight to keep the tears threatening my eyes from falling.
I missed this.
Lily could have known all of my kids growing up.
Amanda keeps her voice quiet and her eyes on the playground as she says the words I haven’t let myself admit since I was 18 years old, begging construction workers not to destroy our garden.
“You love her.”
My first instinct is denial, of course, I don’t, but it catches in my throat. I don’t want to lie, or hide, or tell myself we’re only friends. It’s exhausting, lying to yourself like that.
“Yes.”
Amanda looks at me, and there’s no shock or disappointment, only the same blue eyes, full of love and a little bit of sadness. “How long?”
“Since I was a child.”
She nods, watching me while I watch Lily and the kids. “Before Dad.”
“Yes.”
“And after.”
“Yes.”
We stand in silence for a moment, the sounds of the birds filling the space between us. Lily’s voice, warm and easy as she talks to the boys, drifts over to us.
“Does she know?”
I shake my head. “Not now.”
“But then?”
“I think she did. She must have. Or maybe she was scared and didn’t want to think about it.”
Amanda considers that with a tilt of her head. “It was a different time.”
“Different everything.”
She reaches for my hand, squeezing it between us. “She watches you.”
I look at her with wide, confused eyes. “When you’re not looking,” she continues. “When you’re distracted, or talking to the kids, or pretending not to be staring at her.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“She’s been doing it all day,” she adds, ignoring me. “At the cafe. When we were walking here. Now.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” I whisper, but my heart betrays me, picking up at the thought, the completely unreasonable thought that…
Amanda turns fully toward me then, taking my other hand in hers too. “Mom.”
She waits until I meet her eyes.
“It means something.”
“I spent my whole life thinking I made it up,” my voice cracks, thinking about all the years I thought I was crazy. That I made it all up in my head, that I was too obsessive, that our love wasn’t real.
“You didn’t.”
“Do you think,” I say slowly, the thought so fragile I’m afraid to say it out loud, “that maybe it’s not too late for us?”
“Mom,” she says, with a hint of the annoyance she used to speak with as a teenager, “you’re sixty, not dead. Go get your woman!”
I let out a surprised laugh, releasing her hand to wipe the tears starting to fall onto my cheeks.
“Of course, it’s not too late. It’s your life.”
I glance toward Lily, chasing the boys around while Brooke laughs. “I don’t even know if she wants—”
“You waited long enough to find out, don’t you think?”
She’s right.
I’ve loved Lily, I’ve lost her, but I’ve found her again. I can’t waste this opportunity I’ve been given to make things right. Lily was my best friend, but that isn’t all she was, and I’m tired of pretending.
“I just want to be with her, however that looks like now.”
Amanda nods, her work done. She starts back toward the kids, but pauses to look back at me. “By the way, don’t worry about what any of us will think. We all want to see you happy.” She doesn’t give me a chance to respond before running after her boys.
Across the park, Lily looks up again, her gaze finding mine like it always does.
But this time, I don’t look away.