Chapter 7: The Workshop in the Back
The ceremony ended quietly after that.
The dean said something gracious into the microphone about family and sacrifice and the unofficial curriculum of love.
People clapped.
A few faculty members came to find me afterward and shook my hand without saying much, which was the right instinct.
The girls found me outside under a large oak tree where I had retreated to get my bearings.
Ava reached me first.
She didn't say anything.
She just put her arms around me and held on, and I held on back, and that was enough.
Claire came next.
She pressed her face against my shoulder the way she had done since she was small, whenever something was too large for words.
June was last.
She stood in front of me for a moment with her arms at her sides, looking at me with that expression she had always had — the one that meant she was deciding whether to say the thing she was actually thinking.
"Say it," I said.
"I'm going to be a family law attorney," she said.
"I know," I said.
"I decided when I was fourteen," she said.
"After you spent three weeks helping me understand why Mrs.
Patton's daughter was losing custody of her kids and what the process was and why the system worked the way it did, because I couldn't stop thinking about it and you sat with me every night until I understood."
"I remember," I said.
"I want to help people the way you helped us," she said.
"Not by being related to them.
Just by staying."
I put my hand on the back of her head the way I had when she was small.
"You're going to be extraordinary," I said.
"I learned from someone," she said.
We drove to lunch after that — all four of us in Claire's car, which was too small and smelled like coffee and textbooks.
They argued about the restaurant for eleven minutes.
I timed it.
It felt like every car ride we had ever taken.
We ended up at a diner none of them had agreed on, which meant it was neutral ground, which was how we had always made decisions.
Over lunch, they told me things.
Ava told me she had been offered a research position in Edinburgh and was terrified to take it.
"Take it," I said.
"What if I hate it?"
"Then you come home," I said.
"But you won't hate it."
"How do you know?"
"Because you've never hated anything you were afraid of," I said.
"You've only ever been afraid of things worth doing."
She stared at me.
"When did you get wise?"
"I've always been wise," I said.
"You were just too busy arguing to notice."
Claire told me she had been seeing someone for eight months and hadn't mentioned it because she was afraid I'd make it a bigger deal than it was.
"Is he good to you?" I said.
"Yes," she said.
"Then I don't need to know anything else until you want to tell me," I said.
She looked relieved in a way that told me she had been carrying that conversation for a while.
June waited until the food arrived to tell me the last thing.
"We want you to know," she said, cutting her food without looking up, "that if you ever want to — if there's ever someone — we would be fine with that."
I looked at her.
"Someone," I said.
"You know what I mean."
"I do know what you mean."
"You gave up a lot," she said.
"We don't want you to think that chapter is closed.
You're fifty-one, not a hundred."
"Thank you for that," I said.
"We mean it," Ava said.
"I know you do," I said.
I looked at all three of them around that table — Ava with her Edinburgh terror, Claire with her secret boyfriend, June already carrying the weight of other people's problems like it was a natural posture — and I thought about the apartment above the hardware store, and the $312, and the tiny hand.
"I didn't miss anything," I said.
June looked up.
"I know that's not what people say," I said.
"I know the correct thing is to talk about sacrifice and what I gave up.
But sitting here — I didn't miss anything.
I got the whole thing."
None of them spoke for a moment.
Then Claire reached across the table and covered my hand with hers.
May you like
"We're going to take such good care of you when you're old," she said.
"I'm counting on it," I said.
