“So.” Vivian tucked her feet underneath her. “How’s it really going?”
Margo reached for her wine, then set it down without drinking. The brie was getting soft in the evening warmth. Outside, she could hear the neighbor’s wind chimes—the annoying ones she’d been meaning to complain about for three years.
“I don’t know what to tell her,” Margo said finally.
“About Stella?”
“About any of it.” She picked at a thread on her armchair. “She keeps asking how I managed. How I let my grandchildren find their own way. Like I have answers.”
“You did let them find their way,” Eleanor said gently. “Tyler travels. Meg built her career. Anna?—”
“I know.” Margo’s voice came out rougher than she intended. “I know what I did with them.”
Silence.
“But Sam—” She stopped. Started again. “With Sam, I didn’t know how to do it right. And I still don’t know what I would have changed.”
The wind chimes filled the quiet.
“And now Fiona’s looking at me like I have wisdom.” Margo shook her head. “I don’t have wisdom. I have regret I can’t even figure out.”
Letty reached over and squeezed her hand. Didn’t say anything. Just held on.
“I’m scared I’m watching her make the same mistake,” Margo said, very quietly. “And I don’t know what the mistake was. Just that I made it.”
Eleanor set down her wine glass, and her voice was gentle. “Let me stop you right there. We all had a front row seat to all of that too, Margo. And Stella is a teenager, doing what teenagers do. What they’re supposed to do. Becoming an individual.” She cleared her throat, her voice firmer now. “Sam was not a teenager. She left when she was an adult. And left again as an adult. And yet again.”
Margo turned to look at her oldest, dearest friends and felt her eyes sting. “I suppose that’s true. I really did what I could. All I knew how to do.”
Nadine leaned forward. “Eleanor’s right. And I’msorry if this hurts, but Sam didn’t just leave you. She left her own children.”
Margo took in a quick breath, feeling as if she’d been punched.
Letty started to say something—something about toward and away, about what Stella was choosing—but Eleanor held up a hand.
“She’s not Sam.” Eleanor’s voice was firm. “That’s what matters. She’s not Sam. We can tie ourselves in knots about all of it, but at the end of the day? Sam left her children. Repeatedly. Stella is a teenager choosing where to grow up. Those aren’t the same thing. They’re not even close.”
“And you stayed,” Nadine added quietly. “You always stayed. That wasn’t nothing, Margo. That was everything.”
Margo sat with that for a moment. The wine in her glass caught the porch light, glowing amber.
“Maybe that’s enough,” she said finally. “Knowing it was different. Even if it’s still messy.”
“Is it enough?”
“I don’t know.” Eleanor smiled, sad and honest. “But it’s what we have.”
Vivian cleared her throat. “Well. On that note—anyone want to hear about my colonoscopy?”
Letty threw a pillow at her.
“What? The mood needed lightening. I have stories.”
“We absolutely do not want to hear your colonoscopy stories.”
“Your loss. The anesthesiologist was very handsome.”
And just like that, the Circle shifted back to normal—Vivian’s inappropriate medical tales, Nadine’s commentary, Eleanor’s patient sighs. Margo laughed, the weight on her chest not gone but... shared. Lighter.
