“He wasn’t perfect,” she said.
“No,” I answered, my own throat tight.
“But he was mine,” she whispered, almost fiercely. “And I was his.”
I reached over and placed my hand on hers. Her fingers were still cold, but they tightened around mine like she needed the contact to stay grounded.
“And now,” I said, “you’re not alone with this.”
She swallowed, nodded once, and kept her eyes on the road ahead like she was choosing, mile by mile, to keep going.
The next Saturday, I woke early again.
The kitchen was still quiet. Still aching with absence. The kind of quiet that feels like a room holding a memory.
But the vase wasn’t empty.
On the table sat a bouquet of wildflowers, bright and imperfect and alive. They weren’t arranged like a florist had touched them. They looked gathered by hand, chosen for color and stubborn beauty, stems uneven, leaves still clinging.
My heart tightened.
I heard my grandmother’s footsteps behind me. Not rushed. Not slow. Just steady.
She came into the kitchen and saw me looking at the flowers.
For a moment her face softened, the hard edge of grief giving way to something tired but determined.
She gave me a small smile. It wasn’t big. It wasn’t effortless. But it was real.
“It’s Saturday,” she said.
And for the first time since my grandfather died, the house didn’t feel wrong.
It still felt bruised. It still felt honest in its emptiness. But it also felt inhabited by something that hadn’t left.
Love, changed in shape, carrying a new truth, but still present.
The flowers stood in the sunlight on the table, lifting their faces toward the day as if they’d always understood how this story would keep moving forward.
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