Marianne’s answer came without hesitation.
“With his whole life,” she said.
My grandmother looked down at the dried flower, then at her wedding ring. Her shoulders shook once, like a wave passing through her.
Then, slowly, she reached out and took Marianne’s hand.
“Come here,” she said, her voice hoarse.
Marianne blinked, startled. “What?”
My grandmother tightened her grip gently, the way someone does when they’re afraid the other person might disappear.
“Come here,” she repeated. “Because if I don’t do this now, I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering if I could have.”
Marianne moved closer like someone approaching a frightened animal, careful and unsure. My grandmother pulled her into an embrace.
It wasn’t warm at first.
It was messy. It was grief and shock and years of untold truth packed into a single moment.
But it was real.
When they pulled apart, my grandmother wiped her face with the back of her hand, exhausted in a way that made her look suddenly older.
“I’m angry,” she admitted, voice quiet and honest. “I’m hurt. And I don’t know what I’m going to do with this.”
Marianne nodded, crying quietly as if she’d expected nothing else.
“You don’t have to do anything today,” she said. “I just… I didn’t want you to think he was a villain.”
My grandmother’s eyes moved again to the photos on the walls, to the life that existed here, one my grandfather had cared for from a distance.
Then she noticed a small bouquet on the counter, set in a jar. Fresh. Simple. Bright.
“Did you know about the Saturday flowers?” my grandmother asked, her voice softer now.
Marianne sniffed.
“He told me,” she said. “He said it was the one thing he did that made him feel… clean.”
My grandmother let out a broken laugh through her tears, a sound filled with love and frustration and disbelief all at once.
“Thomas,” she whispered, and his name sounded like both a complaint and a prayer.
On the drive home, the air in the car felt different.
Not lighter. Not healed. But changed, as if the truth had rearranged the furniture inside my grandmother’s heart and now she had to learn how to walk through it again.
She stared out the window for a long time. The afternoon light slid across her face in quiet bands as we passed trees and open fields.
Finally, she spoke.
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