Total pages in book: 39
Estimated words: 37164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 186(@200wpm)___ 149(@250wpm)___ 124(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 37164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 186(@200wpm)___ 149(@250wpm)___ 124(@300wpm)
I see the moment hit her. My mom doesn’t interrupt. She doesn’t call Savannah over. She simply steps closer and reaches out, her fingers closing around Savannah’s hand like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Savannah looks down, surprised, then smiles, that soft, unguarded one that always weakens me. She squeezes back without thinking. Trust, in its purest form.
For a second, I swear I see it too.
The past and the future braided together.
Everything my mother survived. Everything Savannah lost. Everything that somehow still found its way here.
Savannah is called away a moment later, drawn back into the orbit of planning and lists and people who need her attention and direction.
My mother doesn’t look away right away. When she finally turns to me, her eyes are bright, not with tears, exactly, but with something heavier. “She would’ve been a beautiful mother.”
“She still will be,” I reply, matching her soft tone.
This isn’t hope. It’s knowing.
My mother smiles then, slow, certain, the same smile she wore the morning I opened a red truck and learned what it felt like to be chosen. “Yes,” she says. “She will.”
Months later, Savannah and I stand on a piece of land just outside town. There’s nothing built there yet, it’s snow, dirt and a hell of a lot of possibility. I sketch in the air as I talk, ideas free flowing out of me, where the windows would go, how the light would hit the kitchen in the morning and then how it would shift as the sun retires, hitting her body in the bedroom under the light of the moon. Everything from where a garden should be on the outside to where and how long of a dining table would fit on the inside.
She listens, eyes shining. “One day.”
I don’t rush it. I’ve learned the best things are built when you let them be.
I picture my mother holding a grandchild here someday, teaching them how to give without being seen and teaching them Diane’s rules before they ever know her name. I imagine Savannah standing in the doorway, watching, her hand resting at her throat the way it does when something moves her.
I imagine a tree as tall as a New York City skyscraper planted in the backyard, planted for Diane. A tree her grandchildren can climb and carve their names into, one strong enough to hold swings and strands of Christmas lights that never quite come down. A tree that grows its rings the way she taught us how to live, slowly and generously, rooted in love.
And deep in the stable part of me, the place that doesn’t waver, I know that when the time comes, I’ll build that house with my own two hands. Not to keep Savannah, not to bind her to this place, but to meet her there, exactly as she is.
Tonight, the square is quiet again. Snow falls slow and deliberate, the lights humming softly overhead. Savannah stands beneath them, laughing with Ruth Levin and Mrs. Kincaid about something that absolutely doesn’t matter and somehow matters more than anything.
She looks over and finds me watching. She always knows when I’m looking at her. She always has.
She smiles, not the careful version she once wore, but the unguarded one. The one that says I’m here. I’m choosing this. I’m not losing myself to do it.
She didn’t come back to stay. She came back to build something that could move.
And somehow, without ever asking her to be less, without ever asking her to choose between worlds, she chose me.
Later, when the house has gone still and the night has wrapped itself around us, she settles closer, warm and trusting, her cheek pressed to my chest like it has always known the way home.
“Tell me,” she whispers. “Tell me again. I love when you say it.”
I smile into her hair, breathing her in. “Diane’s rules?”
She nods, a small movement, but it carries the weight of years. Of love. Of loss.
I don’t rush it. I never do.
I say them softly, like they’re a prayer instead of instructions. They were meant to be passed hand to hand, heart to heart. I’ve carried them with me through every Christmas, every quiet act of kindness, every moment I wondered if what I was building would matter, without even meeting the words.
“Give without being seen,” I begin.
“Never ask why someone needs help.”
“One cart can change everything.”