something he was still learning to trust himself with.
“I’ll make us some dinner while you get her settled,” I told him.
He looked up at me, eyes still wet, and didn’t say anything at all. He didn’t need to.
I stood at my own stove that night, in the same kitchen where I’d raised a daughter I’d thought I’d lost twice — once when she vanished, and once more when I found out how much of her life had gone on without me. My granddaughter was fed and quiet in the next room. Her father was still standing in my house instead of walking out of it.
Jennifer had come home, in the only way she still could.
She had sent me the piece of herself she loved most, wrapped in the one thing she never let go of, and trusted me to finish raising what she couldn’t.
I stillhum when I bake. Hope will grow up knowing that about me, the way her mother once did. Some things, it turns out, a person doesn’t have to be in the room to pass down.
