“We know you wouldn’t have,” Father says as Mother stares at both of them, her lips pressed tightly together.
“You knew, this whole time?” Rosalie stares at her father in shock, in wonder, in anger. It’s like she’s seeing her parents as entirely new people. “And it didn’t matter?”
Father shakes his head with a sad smile. “I loved your mother from the very first night we danced. Everything about her. That she’d loved before me didn’t matter. Who she loved before me didn’t matter. Just that I was her greatest and her last.”
Rosalie feels a tear slip down her cheek and tries to reach up to wipe it away. Both Christopher and Aunt Genevieve whip out handkerchiefs for her. She takes Christopher’s with trembling fingers.
“And you—Father—” Rosalie starts, looking back at hermother, who’s gripping Father’s hand so tightly. “It doesn’t matter that—you feel the same way for him that—” She can’t seem to find the proper words.
There aren’t proper words for any of this, because it’s never discussed.
Mother swallows hard, meeting her eyes. “For me, I think, it matters more who the person is than whether they are a man or a woman.”
“Oh,” Rosalie says.
She didn’t know. What else doesn’t she know?
“Had the girl I loved once stayed—had I had your bravery, darling, to go after her when she left, I don’t know where I’d be today,” Mother says, and Rosalie’s heart stutters.
Who was she? What tore them apart?
Could she have sobbed in her mother’s arms when Jane left?
“That I fell madly in love with your father was purely luck. I could just as easily have fallen for another woman—for someone I could not love loudly and with my entire chest. The way you have with MissPine.”
Rosalie stares at her mother, feeling so wonderfully seen, and somehow yet so entirely other. “I don’t think I could fall in love with a man,” she whispers. The words still carry around the room.
“And you do not have to,” Father says immediately.
But Rosalie’s still watching her mother, who smiles so softly at her.
“All we care about is that you love whomever you choose to spend your life with,” Father continues.
“Do you love MissPine?” Mother asks.
They’ve avoided such words, but Rosalie does. She does. Ardently, and passionately, and fully.
“I should probably tell her first,” Rosalie whispers.
Aunt Genevieve chuckles. “You should.” Rosalie turns and meets Aunt Genevieve’s eyes. “I have a feeling she feels the same way.”
“I hope so,” Rosalie says.
“You don’t risk your whole life on someone you don’t love,” Mother says, a promise there in her slightly teary voice.
Rosalie turns to look at her, a catch in her chest.
“I’m sorry it wasn’t clear that you could tell me,” Mother adds. “That I made you go through this all alone.”
Rosalie doesn’t know what to say. She didn’t know there was any other option until tonight. She’s grieving something she never knew existed. Where does all that pain go?
“We’ll make it up to you now,” Father says.
“All of us,” Aunt Genevieve adds. “Because it is far less lonely, isn’t it, for our loved ones to know who we truly are?” Rosalie looks up at her and finds her watching Mother.
Rosalie turns and Mother meets her eyes. “It is.”
A short sob erupts unexpectedly from Rosalie’s chest. Aunt Genevieve wraps her arm around Rosalie’s shoulders and she leans into her, trying to calm down, handkerchief pressed to her lips.
