My mom dips her chin down and kisses me on the forehead. “It’s your name, sweetheart. It’s who you really are.” She smooths my hair with the back of her hand. “Sometimes things happen in life that we don’t understand. That are unreasonably cruel.” She stops and touches my cheek. Her hands are warm. She probably already started cooking. “But that doesn’t mean you curl up and give in. Do you understand?”
I blink back tears, and she stands up, going over to my window. She pulls back the blinds, and light comes pouring into my bedroom.
“There are still some surprises left,” she says. “Come and see.”
“What?”
She doesn’t respond; she just keeps looking outside. I toss back the covers and realize it’s kind of cold in my room. I wrap my robe around me and go to stand behind her. When I get there, I gasp.
All across our lawn down below, covering our outdoor furniture and lining our deck, is a delicate white blanket of snow.
“It’s beautiful,” I say.
“So are you,” my mother says. She puts her arm around me, and this time I let her. I lean my head on her shoulder. I’m as close to anyone as I have been since Charlie collected me from my floor weeks ago, and maybe because I feel protected, for just a moment, it slips out.
“It was my fault,” I whisper. I’m blinking, my eyes struggling to adjust to the influx of light. “I know Juliet didn’t pull the wheel. It was Rob. He was drunk. He came to see me, and I turned him away. He should never have been in the car. It was my fault he died.”
“Is that what you think?” My mom takes her arm away from me and crosses it against her chest.
“It’s just true,” I say. “He should have been with me. I could have stopped this.”
“No,” my mom says, “that’s not how it works.” She wanders away from the window and over to my desk. She picks up a picture and sets it back down. “I realize I don’t know exactly what happened between the two of you. And there was all that stuff with Juliet.…” She loops her finger in the air a few times like she’s trying to hurry herself up. “But one thing I do know is that we don’t get to choose when we leave this world. And we don’t get to choose when others leave either.”
She drops her hands to her sides and sighs. “Honey, think about your dad. He didn’t speak to his brother for ten years.” Shecloses her eyes like she’s trying to get the words right. “That was a choice,” she says, “and he missed out on getting to know his niece. We all did.”
“I just didn’t think it would happen like this.”
“I know, baby,” she says, “but this is life. We can’t plan it; it just happens. The only thing we get to choose is how we react to it.”
I think about Charlie and what she told me.We can choose to be happy. You can choose not to blame yourself.Then I get it. And there’s one more thing I think we can choose too.
I take out my phone and text her back.Dinner at my house? Love you. I get one back immediately:DUH. Luv u 2, Rosebud.
“So are you going to join us downstairs for your birthday?” my mom asks.
“In a few minutes. First there’s something I have to do.” She nods and smiles at my dad, who’s just come in. He’s holding a big white envelope.
“Happy birthday, cookie,” he says. “In the midst of everything, we forgot to give you this.”
They look at each other and then at me as my dad slides the envelope onto the bed. Embossed on the front is the Stanford logo. Of course. I’d forgotten to check online.
“Go ahead,” my dad says. “See what’s inside.”
I pick it up and turn it over. I’ve been waiting for this momentfor ten years. Longer, even. I always imagined how it would go. I would call Rob, excited and breathless, and he would come over. We’d sit on the floor in my bedroom and I’d put a hand over my eyes and hand him the envelope. “I can’t do it,” I’d say. “Just tell me.”
He’d open it and read it to himself with a straight face, nodding soberly. Then he’d look up with a blank expression and say, “Rosie, here’s the deal.” He’d pause, and my heart would be beating out of my chest. Then his face would crack into a gigantic smile and he’d say, “You got in!” He’d thrust the paper into my hands, and I’d read with completely shaking fingers, the letter flapping everywhere.
But now it’s just me and the envelope. No Rob. No nerves, even. I turn it in my hands, just holding it, and then I set it back down on the bed.
My dad frowns and looks at me, but my mom is smiling slightly, that little smile that says she justknows. “We’ll be here when you’re ready,” she says, and ushers my dad outside.
Something is coming back, some life force I’ve been missing since Rob died, maybe even before. Probably before, actually, because it feels like my entire life I’ve been just floating along, anticipating one thing and then another, like my life was a checklist and I just kept ticking items off. I used to think that was safe, comfortable. Like nothing bad could happen if I just stuck to thelist. Now I realize it was downright constricting. I don’t want to live like I know what’s coming.
I throw myself into my bathroom. I run a brush through my hair and gargle with some mouthwash. I’ve looked better, but I just don’t care. I’m buzzing now, humming with the excitement of what I’m about to do.
I jump into some jeans and pull a long-sleeved T-shirt over my head. Then I throw on a sweater. After all, it’s snowing outside. For the first time I kind of understand what my mom’s been talking about. That it’s my birthday and the start of a new year. It’s cool, really, that I get this chance to do things differently. That one day, one moment, can mark the beginning of all kinds of change.
My parents are hanging out in the kitchen when I get downstairs. They actually went over to Juliet’s parents’ house the other night. I don’t know if they will fix things, but I think they’ve started to try, and for just a moment I’m grateful for that, for the fact that sometimes things turn out the way they do, and even if unthinkable things happen, there is good buried underneath. Feuds can end. Families can reunite. Friends can change and grow, sometimes even with you. The possibilities of life are unknown and endless, and the staggering reality of that, of how much things can change in a moment, suddenly seems less scary and more full of hope. Overwhelming, but tinged with excitement. Like the edges don’t recede away into oblivion, stretchingout forever, but instead are lit on fire. Energized, somehow. Like life isn’t something that happenstous but through us and by us. Like we’re a part of something. Like we have choice. Because having a plan is great, but sometimes you realize that the thing you really want, you forgot to write down.
