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The crowd thins moderately as we reach the end of the row, and I move beside her instead of trailing behind. Rose has somehow added a bag of apples to her collection since I last checked, and a bunch of carrots is sticking out of the top of her tote beside the lavender.

“You just decide you want something and that’s it?”

“I think we’ve covered this.”

“But then what?”

“Then nothing, sometimes.”

I make another frustrated sound, and she laughs.

“I don’t understand how you live like that.”

“Pretty happily, generally.”

I laugh, and she does, too, but there’s something about the ease of her statement that makes the difference between us feel more obvious than usual. Rose has had objectively terrible romantic experiences. Possibly worse than mine. She has loved men who left, women who cheated, men who—allegedly—committed grand larceny, and somehow none of it has convinced her that the wanting itself was embarrassing.

“You don’t regret things?”

She smiles, but it fades quickly as we step out of the way of a couple coming toward us.

“I regret some things,” she says. “And I regret some of the things I let people get away with because I wanted things to work out. But no, I don’t regret wanting and choosing to do the things I’ve done.”

I’m quiet for a moment.

“Even now, knowing that things would come to an end?”

“How things end doesn’t change how it felt before it ended, Merry.”

She says it so simply that I almost argue on instinct.

Rose has always been the one we worry about. At least, that’s how I’ve thought about it. Rose goes somewhere without a plan, Rose falls for someone too quickly, Rose quits something because it stops making her happy, Rose comes home again. Meanwhile, I bought a house. I stayed at the same job. I contribute to my retirement account like I’m expected to. I have spare batteries in a labeled container inside a drawer in the kitchen.

I am the person who makes sense.

At least, I’ve always assumed I am.

“You know,” Rose says after a moment of us standing idly in the middle of the farmers market, “you weren’t born forty-five.”

“I’m thirty-four.”

“Exactly my point.”

“That makes no sense, Rose.”

“It does to me.” She shifts her bag higher onto her shoulder. “You’ve always been like this.”

“Responsible?”

“I was going to say something else, but I guess your fancy vocabulary works, too.”

I nudge her with my shoulder, and she laughs.

“You were packing my lunch when you were, what, twelve?”

“Mom had to work early and Dad was too focused on getting us all out of the house. What did you want me to do?”

She faintly smiles, but she doesn’t make the joke I expect. “They did expect more from you,” she says instead.