She didn’t reach for Cecelia.
Instead, she asked, “May I hold her?”
That question mattered more than she probably understood.
I handed Cecelia to her.
Violet stared down at the baby for a long time.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
Cecelia yawned.
Violet laughed through tears.
“I knew your daddy when he didn’t have teeth either.”
I smiled.
For a few minutes, grief stopped being a battlefield.
I hoped that meant something had changed.
But healing is rarely that simple.
A few weeks later, Violet was visiting when Mark’s aunt stopped by.
I was in the kitchen when I heard their voices from the living room.
“Mark wasn’t himself near the end,” Violet said.
I stopped moving.
“Sally handled everything. I still don’t believe he would have chosen all of that if he’d been thinking clearly.”
I walked into the room.
Violet was holding Cecelia.
