“No,” I said. “It wasn’t.”
“I’m not asking you to forget it.”
“Good,” I said. “Because I won’t.”
She nodded.
“But,” I said, and she looked up. “You’re her grandmother. That doesn’t change. She’s going to need you. She’s going to need both her grandmothers. So you’re going to have to earn your way back. Just like he is.”
“I will,” Diane said. “However long it takes.”
“It might take a long time.”
“I’ve got a long time,” she said. “I’m planning to live to a hundred. Out of spite, mostly.”
I laughed. I didn’t mean to. It just came out.
Diane smiled. A small, careful, hopeful smile.
I want to tell you that it all got fixed. That one day, Ben said the perfect thing, and I fell into his arms, and we went home to our house with the blue door, and everything was the way it was before.
