She’d been turning for the door, but she stopped.
“I’d do it again, pet,” Honor whispered. “Even if you decide you hate me from here on out. Even if I have to live every day of my life without you in it. I’d choose you all over again. Every time.”
“Well.” Vivian took a deep breath. “That’s a start, I guess.” She met Honor’s eyes. “It doesn’t fix it. But it’s a start.”
THIRTY-FOUR
Florence cried when she saw Vivian standing in the doorway, though she tried to pretend she was just feeling weepy because of her pregnancy.
“You’re not very convincing,” Vivian laughed, holding her sister close.
“Shut up,” Florence sniffed, pulling away just far enough that she could look at Vivian’s face. “How?” she asked simply.
Danny had been sitting with Florence when Vivian arrived. But after pressing a quick kiss to his wife’s head and giving Vivian a hug, he made himself scarce. Vivian was glad, both that she could have her sister to herself and that she didn’t have to explain for him. He knew Honor better than almost anyone—except, perhaps, Vivian realized, for her. But Honor hadn’t told him about her mother, and Vivian didn’t know whether she should or not.
“They caught the woman who did it,” she said simply, steering her sister back toward her chair. “She was working as a maid in his house,but they had a…” She hesitated. “A romantic history together. They had a child who didn’t survive. She blamed him.”
It was all true, and it left so much out.
“My God, could they have cut things any closer?” Florence gasped, half laughing and half crying. “I’m sorry, I’m dragging you around, but I don’t want to let go of your hand. I don’t want you to disappear on me.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Vivian murmured, leaning her head against her sister’s, temple to temple. They sat like that until there was a knock at the door and Danny’s cousin Lucky poked his head in.
“Auntie sent me with a treat,” he said. “Hey, Viv. Good to see you’re not in prison.”
She tried to laugh at that, though her stomach twisted into knots. “Thanks.” Part of her still half believed that she would wake up tomorrow and discover she was there after all. “Pinch me,” she whispered to Florence while Lucky handed over a plate of buns fresh from the kitchen.
Florence waved to Lucky as the door closed behind him. “Why?”
“I want to make sure this is real.” Vivian stared around the tiny, pretty room, curtains fluttering at the window, a much-patched quilt spread across the bed. Florence in her rocking chair, the only furniture she had brought with her into her new life. The rain still fell outside, an irregular beat like the intro to a jazz number. “It feels like a dream.”
She yelped as Florence pinched her arm. “It’s real,” Florence whispered, running her hand gently over the sore spot she had just made. “Danny kept telling me it would be all right, and I didn’t believe him.”
“He was saying that just to make you feel better, you know,” Vivian pointed out.
Florence laughed and took one of the buns from the plate. “I know. But he was still right. And now I have everything I need again.”
Vivian dragged a breath past the lump in her throat. Florence’s certainty, that she was loved and all would be well, rubbed at the tenderplaces in Vivian’s heart, the places that wished she had that certainty herself. “Flo, you love Danny, right?”
“Of course I do,” Florence said, frowning at her.
“Well,” Vivian said slowly, not sure she wanted to say it but pushing herself through the question anyway. “What if you love someone, but the person you love does something unforgivable?”
Florence looked surprised by the question, but there was a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “There’s no ‘if’ about it. Theywilldo something unforgivable. It’s what people do.”
“What happens then? Just hope that one day, they’ll make it up to you?”
“No. They can’t.” Florence shook her head. “There’s no making it right. That’s what it means for it to be unforgivable.”
“But—”
“Vivi.” Florence took her hand. “Sometimes forgiveness is a gift you choose to give, even though a person could never possibly earn it, because you love them. Becausetheyare forgivable, even if whatever they did isn’t.”
“That sounds…” Vivian shook her head. “Really damn hard.”
“It is.” Florence smiled. “It’s one of the hardest things in the world. But if you can’t do it, you’re going to go through life alone. Because everyone you meet, everyone you love, at some point will do something unforgivable. We’re human. We can’t avoid it.”
“And what if you don’t know whether you love them enough to do it?”
