Now, Blue sat across the café table, so close and so real that Lavender could see each of her granddaughter’s willowy eyelashes. She could not help it. When Lavender began to cry, it felt like a split of thunder, a cloud breaking over a summer afternoon.
*
It started with a letter.
The first envelope had arrived nearly a year ago. Lavender and Sunshine had just moved into Magnolia house, the family unit with the best kitchen in all of Gentle Valley—the women had unanimously agreed that Sunshine should have the glossy, capable stove. Sunshine, with her blistered red hands, which Lavender often traced in her sleep. Sunshine, who spoke entire conversations through a zap of cinnamon in a pan of flaxseed muffins. Sunshine, who cupped a gentle palm around Lavender’s hip when the letter arrived, her presence an instinctual comfort.
Dear Lavender,
You don’t know me, but hello. My name is Blue Harrison.
Blue had gotten the address from her grandmother Cheryl. Cheryl had been holding it for years; she’d handed it over reluctantly after a conversation about Ellis’s origins. If Lavender was interested, Blue would like to be in touch. She had left a phone number and an email address at the bottom of the page.
Lavender had tucked the letter beneath her pillow, where she let it simmer for nearly a month. There was a landline in the Sequoia building, but Lavender was awkward over the phone, stilted with lack of experience. Sunshine sometimes pulled her laptop out before bed, and they flicked through photos of Minnie’s life online. Sunshine’s daughter ran a bakery in Mendocino, with a baby of her own. But the internet seemed like a foreign, complicated place.
So Lavender sat down with a sheet of paper and her favorite felt-tip pen. All those years, crafting letters in her head.
Practice, just for this.
She wrote about Gentle Valley. About the sun, glowing orange over the hills at daybreak, about the rosemary sprouting in Sunshine’s herb garden. She and Sunshine had taken a trip to the Grand Canyon, Lavender’s first time on an airplane, and she told Blue about the red-clay cliffs, the way the chasms had curved, like bends in a river. Blue sent warm anecdotes in return. By the time months had passed, dozens of letters had been exchanged, and Lavender could picture Ellis’s beard, the heft of his shoulders as he bounced along to the radio in the Blue House kitchen.
Lavender brought it up herself. She couched the question in the middle of a paragraph, so discreet it could be easily ignored. Just writing the words brought back the old sludge of guilt, flooding inexorable.
Do you know anything about my other son, Ansel?
Blue’s response took weeks to arrive. When it did, Lavender understood that her granddaughter had taken care to be particularly gentle. Ansel spent some time in the Blue House, seven years ago, she wrote. I can tell you more, if you’re sure you want to hear. But I’ll warn you, it’s painful.
The feeling was wider than curiosity—Lavender knew that to scratch at the truth would bring her peace, no matter the hurt. She had never before hungered for information. It was a sign. Her wounds had scarred. Her days had rooted. She was ready.
It’s not the kind of thing you should read in a letter, Blue had replied, when Lavender pressed for more. But I have an idea. Why don’t you come out to the Blue House? The women of Gentle Valley had thrilled at the idea, put the funds together without question.
Now, Lavender watched as Blue talked, unselfconscious, a charming lilt to her voice. An extrovert. Blue unknotted her braid and ran her fingers through her hair, wafting the scent of young-girl deodorant as she chattered idly about her apartment in Brooklyn, the restaurant she worked at in the city, her volunteer work with the animal shelter. Lavender nodded along, awestruck. I made this person, she thought, as Blue’s hands fluttered unencumbered. It seemed miraculous, such cosmic grace. Like the first peep of green after a long gray winter.
*
After dinner, they sat on the deck. String lights had been woven through the slats in the polished wood, and the night was humid, gusting a floral breeze as the dishwasher whirred. Rachel had excused herself with a warm goodnight; Blue’s mother was both generous and reserved, patient with her daughter’s curiosity.
“Is it weird to be here?” Blue asked.
Lavender leaned forward in the plastic deck chair. She peered into the shadowy yard—the land shifted, stilled into night.
“It’s easier than I imagined,” Lavender said.
“I can still feel him here, sometimes. My dad.”
“I think I can, too.” It was true. Lavender could feel Ellis in strange, glimpsing slivers. He was in the carefully framed maps of the Adirondack peaks, in the blinding blue of the house’s exterior paint. He was in the arc and slant of Blue’s pale cheek.