Her friends exchanged glances. They’d known her long enough to read the signs—the too-careful way she moved, the rigid set of her shoulders, the way she kept touching her wedding ring though Richard had been gone for years.
“What’s happened?” Letty asked gently.
“Stella.” The name came out like a prayer and a wound. “Having Stella here, seeing Tyler with his daughter, watching them figure out how to be a family...” She stopped, pressed her lips together.
“Makes Sam’s absence louder,” Vivian finished.
Margo nodded once, sharp. “I keep thinking she’ll walk through the door. ‘Surprise, Mom! Heard I have a granddaughter!’ But she won’t. She doesn’t even know Stella exists.”
“Have you told her?” Nadine asked.
“How? Her last message was two months ago from Prague. Or was it Peru? She sends these breezy little notes about light and inspiration and finding herself.”Margo’s laugh was bitter. “Fifty-eight years old and still finding herself.”
Eleanor reached across the table, covered Margo’s hand with her own. “Tell us.”
And finally, finally, Margo let the words come.
“I bought her house. Three years ago. She needed money for her ‘journey’ and couldn’t be bothered to come back and handle the sale. So I bought it through a trust. She doesn’t know. Thinks some stranger owns it.”
“Oh, Margo,” Letty said quietly.
“Every week, I change the flowers. Pink roses, like she loved. I pay for the gardener, the cleaning service. I dust her easel—did you know she left her easel? Right there in the studio, like she might walk back in and start painting.”
Her voice cracked on the last word. She reached for her wine glass but her hand was shaking too badly. Vivian quietly took the glass, set it aside, and covered Margo’s trembling fingers with her own.
“Three years of fresh flowers for a daughter who can’t remember my birthday. Three years of keeping a house ready for someone who’s never coming home.” She looked at each of them. “And now Tyler’s family is crammed into his tiny house, Meg’s working from the bathroom, Stella needs stability, and I’m maintaining an empty shrine three doors down.”
“It’s not a shrine,” Eleanor said firmly. “It’s hope.”
“It’s foolishness.” But Margo’s voice broke properly this time. She pressed her free hand to her eyes, just fora moment, fighting for control. “Having Stella here... she’s so much like Sam at that age. That restlessness, that fire. But she came here. She’s trying. She’s choosing to stay, to belong, everything Sam couldn’t do.”
Letty moved then, coming to stand behind Margo’s chair, hands gentle on her shoulders. “Oh, honey.”
“Sometimes I—” Margo’s breath hitched. The words that came next seemed torn from somewhere deep. “Sometimes I hate her for leaving. For making me love her so much and then just... leaving.”
The admission hung in the air, raw and terrible. Margo Turner didn’t say such things. Didn’t admit to hate, didn’t let her voice break, didn’t let people see her shake.
“That’s okay,” Nadine said softly. “It’s okay to hate her a little.”
“And love her anyway,” Eleanor added.
“I can’t stop.” Now the tears came, just two, sliding down before Margo could catch them. “I keep those stupid flowers fresh because what if this is the week she comes home? What if she walks in and the roses are dead and she thinks I gave up on her?”
“She gave up on you,” Eleanor said, fierce in her protection. “Not the other way around.”
“I know that here.” Margo touched her head. “But here—” She pressed her fist to her chest, and for the first time in three years, she let her friends see how much it hurt. “Here, I’m still her mother. Still waiting.Still hoping for something that’s never going to happen.”
Vivian squeezed her hand harder. Letty’s arms came around her shoulders. Nadine reached across the table. They held her, these women who’d known her as a young wife, a young mother, a widow, a grandmother. Who’d never seen her cry over Sam because Margo Turner didn’t cry.
“The house needs to be lived in,” Margo said when she could speak again. “Meg needs space. It’s three doors down—close enough for family, far enough for breathing room.”
“Are you ready to let it go?” Eleanor asked. “To stop waiting?”
“I’ll never stop waiting. That’s the curse of being a mother.” Margo accepted the tissue Letty offered, used it once, decisively. “But I can stop keeping fresh flowers in an empty house. I can stop preserving a life she abandoned. I can stop...” Her voice failed again.
“Stop punishing yourself for her choices,” Vivian said gently.
Margo nodded, unable to speak.
