Page 137 of Cruel Kiss

Later, after the kids are in bed, my mom and Grigor have retreated into their room to have what I'm sure will be some highly acrobatic old people sex, and Navi has limped out to the front porch to take a mysterious phone call that seems to make him giggle a lot, Ronan and I sit on the end of the dock with our feet in the cold water and a bottle of wine between us.

Anna's ring is on my hand. It's bright in the moonlight.

"Your mother would really have liked me?" I ask.

"She'd have adored you." He's quiet a second. "She'd have adored all of it. The kids. The noise. She spent her whole life apologizing for the space she took up. She'd have loved watching a woman refuse to do the same."

I lean my head on his shoulder.

Upstairs, in Isabella's room, on the windowsill where she insisted on putting it so the moon could get in, there's a shoebox with a chrysalis hanging inside. Still waiting. Still becoming.

When things get all wrapped up and dark and squished,she told us once,that's when they turn into something better.

Damn, my daughter is wise.

I was wrapped up and dark and squished not that long ago. In that hotel room in Phoenix, I thought my world was ending. But that's just how it feels to be a caterpillar when the time comesto become a butterfly. You think you're going to die, and then, suddenly, you wake up one day and you have wings.

Look at me now.

Here I am.

Soaring.