“We give them our blessing, Walter. And if you can’t do that much, then I’m moving to Philadelphia too.”
His mouth dropped open. Mine wanted to follow suit, but I kept it firmly shut. I had never seen Mama stand up to him like this. She always waited until he cooled down before launching her quiet campaigns. It was the first time I saw a hint of Ada in her, and I wondered if it was being in this house that did it.
Eventually his shoulders sagged, and he nodded, mumbling something that sounded like a blessing.
I turned to Dan, whose eyes were wide. “What do you say? Want to stay engaged and take pictures?” He looked at me for a long moment, then suddenly I was in his arms and he swung me in the air. “I take it that’s a yes?”
“As long as you’ll still let me buy the ring.”
I smiled, shaking my head. “Ada has one I want to use. It was her mother’s.”
“I think she would like that.”
I agreed.
Slowly people started to leave as afternoon turned into evening. We’d had a full house until ten the previous two nights, but custom dictated that shiva end at sundown on Shabbat and the visitors knew enough to leave before that, even if no one in our house would be observing. Dan’s parents had left around noon to return to the city in time to lead Shabbat services at our synagogue, but Dan remained with my parents. My mother and Dan helped me, Lillian, and Frannie clean up while my father read Ada’s untouched Philadelphia Inquirer in the den.
My mother and I wound up alone in the dining room. “Mama,” I said. She looked up at me. “Thank you.”
She leaned over and squeezed my shoulder, then busied herself again, piling leftovers onto a plate. “What will you do now?” she asked lightly.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m leaning toward staying here for a while.”
“And you’ll finish your book, of course.” I nodded, though part of me didn’t want to. I had started it with Ada. And finishing it would be closing that chapter of my life even more. “I’ll pass it on to Paul when you do.” Paul Stein was Daddy’s editor friend who sent her books early.
“You will?”
“Of course.” She looked surprised by my question. “If he doesn’t want it—and I think he will—I’m sure he’ll have recommendations of who else we can take it to.”
“We?”
Her mouth twitched up into its first real smile since the phone had rung in the brownstone. “I’ll even waive the customary percentage that literary agents get. Though you can afford it now.”
A sound escaped my throat, and it took me a moment to realize it was a laugh. “Oh, Mama.”
But the corners of her mouth turned down again. “I should have stood up to your father earlier. It shouldn’t have taken Ada dying for you to be able to live the life you wanted.”
I wondered if there had been any way to get here without Ada dying. After all, it had taken Ada’s fiancé dying for her parents to agree to let her stay single and go to nursing school. Perhaps my father had been bluffing all along. But with the clarity of time, I now recognized the remorse on his face when I told him it was his fault Ada had died alone.
I thought back to how angry I had been when they made me go home. And at my father at the train station.
That was gone now, replaced with an aching exhaustion. I just didn’t have it in me to be angry anymore, even at Daddy. He was a product of his time. And not everyone could be like Ada and reject the norms that they were raised in. Not everyone wanted to. I saw that now.
I also saw my mother more clearly. She had surprised me in Avalon with her admission that she read because cooking was boring, not because her life was. Maybe she really was just a terrible cook. Which would mean I came by my lack of culinary skills quite honestly. A giggle rose up in my throat at that disloyal thought, but I swallowed it down.
Instead I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her. “Sometimes things work out how they’re meant to,” I said. “Ada understood that.”
“She did.”
“And this is what she wanted—me to be able to be free without losing my family.” My mother opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off. “You did exactly the right thing. There’s no need for apologies.”
She smiled again, sadly. “When did you get so wise?”
I grinned, shaking my head. “Sometime between that stained glass window and becoming possibly the wealthiest woman in Philadelphia. It’s been quite a summer.”
“That it has.” She looked toward the kitchen. “I’m glad you and Dan found each other. He’s good for you.”
Two months earlier, that comment would have sent me running. But the idea of the stove no longer scared me. Besides, I was an even worse chef than my mother. There was no way I was doing the cooking in any scenario. “I am too.”
She reached up and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “It’s hard letting your baby go off into the world. But I know you’re ready for it.”
“Thank you, Mama.”
She nodded briskly. “And don’t you take too long finishing that book. I expect to see you on the bestseller lists soon.” She picked up the plate she had been working on and carried it into the kitchen.
I sank into one of the dining room chairs, elbow on the table, my chin resting on my hand, contemplating how completely the world had turned upside down in the last few days. Ada always did like to shake things up. Don’t ever think that I don’t know what I’m doing, she said in my head, just like my first night in Philadelphia, when she threw the rock that landed me in a bush.
“Thank you,” I whispered to the empty room.
And for a brief moment, I swore I smelled her perfume, as if she had walked behind me with a nod.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Lillian left on Sunday. Our goodbye was tearful, but she promised I would see her again soon. She held Sally tightly. “You come find us, okay?”
I said I would. I had never been to Chicago, but it seemed like a good place to go on an adventure. And I had time for adventures now. I scratched behind Sally’s ears and kissed the top of her head. “Goodbye, you little terror. What kind of dog is she anyway?”
“A schnauzer,” Lillian said.
“If you’d told me I would miss that dog . . .”
“She’ll be happy to see you,” Lillian promised. “She’s a wonderful judge of character.”
I nodded. “That she is.”
Thomas took her to the train station in Ada’s car, promising to return it after he dropped her off. “I’m not worried,” I told him.
We embraced one more time, and then Lillian was gone. Frannie offered to stay over if I wanted the company until Dan returned the following day to go to Avalon with me. But I told her to go home to her family.
She cleared her throat. “I just wanted to say thank you—”
“No. Thank you, Frannie. Ada loved you dearly. And I appreciate everything you did for me this summer.”
“But you didn’t—”
I smiled at her. “What would Ada say right now?”
She grinned wanly. “To take the gift, say thank you, and shut up about it.”