I decided to let it go.
Dorian turned the heat down, then nestled the browned chicken back into the sauce, skin side up. “Now we let it simmer. Low heat and slow. You can’t rush this part.”
“Because the chicken has to cook through?” Annie asked.
“That. And the sauce becomes better with time. Like fine wine,” Dorian said. “And your mom.”
I looked down into my wineglass, smiling despite myself.
Dorian covered the pan halfway with a lid, leaving a crescent of steam to escape. Then he pointed at the small square of dark chocolate on a saucer near the stove. “We can’t forget to add this at the end. My mother swore by it.”
“I knew your mom,” Annie said to Dorian. “Did you know that?”
“From the store?” Dorian asked.
“Yeah. She used to do story hour for kids,” Annie said. “Mom always took me. I loved it.”
“She loved kids,” Dorian said softly. “And children’s books were one of her passions.”
“One day, after Dad died—maybe six months or so—Gillian took Grace and me into the bookstore and said we could pick any book we wanted.” Annie paused, leaning against the counter. “But I couldn’t pick. I wanted them all. But your mom suggestedThe Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Do you know that one?”
“Sure I do,” Dorian said. “My mother loved that book.”
“She said she had a feeling it might be just the book for me—for what I was going through,” Annie said.
I’d never heard this story before. I knew it was Annie’s favorite book. I knew how many times she’d read it and how often I’d found her curled in bed with it long after she should have been asleep. But I had not known Dorian’s mother had chosen it for her. I had not known that, six months after Jon died, when I was still moving through the world in a daze, someone else had looked at my daughter and seen exactly what she needed.
The story of Edward Tulane was about a beautiful china rabbit who believed himself above love. His was a long, strange journey through the hands of people who loved him, lost him, broke him, found him, named him. Again and again, his heart was asked to open, and, again and again, the price of opening was pain.
No wonder Annie had loved it.
No wonder Dorian’s mother had chosen it for her.
It was a children’s book, yet it told the truth about love and loss in a way that a child could bear. Love might not keep you safe. Being loved might not keep someone from leaving. A heart could break and still, somehow, learn to choose love again.
“And she was right,” Annie said. “I read it over and over. It wasn’t until I started working at the bookstore that it occurred to me she’d given it to me on purpose. That she knew about my dad.”
“It’s a small town,” I said, voice tight. “Everyone knew.”
Dorian didn’t say anything, just listened.
Annie continued, not looking at either of us, almost as if she were talking to herself out loud. “Now that I’m working at Ink & Anchor, I understand how important it is that people find just the book they need at that moment in their life. It’s a profound job, you know? And all those people Mrs. Flynn helped find books? That’s like her legacy. She may be gone physically but she’s still here. In every book she suggested that had an impacton someone. Like me andEdward. And now I get to maybe do that for someone else. The job feels important. And it makes me feel important.”
I fought tears while simultaneously marveling at the wisdom of my daughter. She was so smart. So mature and wise. How had it happened that she’d become this nearly grown person from the tiny girl in pigtails who asked for a bunny pancake?
“Thank you for telling me that.” Dorian eyes glistened with tears and his voice wobbled when he said, “To hear a story about my mother—one like that—it means a lot.” He paused, wiping under his damp cheeks with the back of his hand. “She would have been humbled to hear you call her work a legacy. You know, she never thought of it that way. She just loved books and she loved people. It gave her great joy to find just the right book for someone.”
“She did that for me too,” I said, before I could talk myself out of sharing my Maureen Flynn story.
Annie turned to me. “She did?”
I nodded, my fingers tightening around the stem of my wineglass. “About a year after your dad died. I went into the bookstore looking for something. I don’t even remember what. A birthday gift, maybe. A card. Maybe attempting to be normal instead of how I felt inside, which was far from normal.”
Dorian leaned back against the counter, his expression open and quiet.
“Your mother asked how I was. Not in that way people did then, where they tilted their heads and already looked sorry before I answered. But Maureen asked as if it were possible that Iwasall right. Or that I would be. I told her I hadn’t been able to read since I lost my husband. Just came right out of my mouth. She squeezed my arm and said she had just the book to get me out of a reading slump. She left for a moment and returned withThe Enchanted April. Do you know it?”
“Of course,” Dorian said. “My mother loved that one too.”
