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“Going home with you,” she tells me easily, meaning it completely, before pulling away from me and dropping into her seat in the minivan.

She doesn’t need me to tell her that I like that too—she already knows. Us spending our days in a cabin I built will always be the thing I like most.

We’ll get married this fall at church—just her and me—in a field of wildflowers that nobody expects to see bloom. Turns out, all the rumors on the internet were wrong—it seems a man had planted the field in memory of his late wife who left him and his daughter too soon. The man, I learned over a busted cookie slab table one evening, said he felt her with him when wildflowers bloom.

Every time I look at Birdie, I know exactly how he feels.

My Dearest Bo,

I bet you are angry enough to spit fire.

You have every right to be, and I’m sorry.

I know what I’ve done to you. You might feel a bit robbed, like there could have been more of something. I’m here to tell you, there wouldn’t have been. It was ending, and ultimately, I saved us both a lot of pain and a long goodbye.

I couldn’t let you talk me out of it as much as I couldn’t let you see me. You might not agree with my choices, but they were mine alone.

You will forgive me, and when you do, you will forgive Birdie.

She loves you, Bo, but what comes next will be a struggle for her. She might blame herself, might pull away. You’ll have to keep showing up. Be as big a pain in the ass to her as she was to me.

Show her you love her. Show her that if she gets the kind of sick she expects she will, you’ll be there.

I realize the irony of what I’m telling you—me shutting you out while telling you not to let someone else do it. But I’m an old woman and she’s the love of your life. You’ll have to trust I know these things.

When the time comes, I’ve included my ring for you to give her. It’s not fancy, but neither is she. I can’t control your life, but if you slide the ring on another woman’s hand, I’ll haunt you. I have no idea the logistics of that, but I’ll figure it out. I managed to raise you through your teenage years, haunting is probably a cakewalk.

I want her to have the cabin. She belongs in the studio making beautiful things.

You were a light of my life, Bo.

She was too.

Love always,

Gran