This isn’t new. Their arguments about what I believe in, what I want. Usually, my grandmother wins by pointing out that Hyacinth left me for her to raise, and my mother shuts up. But this time I actually hear her. She’s right. I didn’t want to stay close to home. I didn’t want weekly religious meetings. I’d rejected her idea of heaven for people like her and hell for everyone else years ago. I didn’t know why, exactly, but suddenly I think I understand.

Hyacinth did not raise me. But she brought me books, enrolled me in classes, expanding my horizons where she could, so I’d acquire a taste for the world outside of what her mother wanted to teach me.

“Noah was perfectly⁠—”

“Boring,” she finishes for her.

“He wanted to marry her! Right out of high school, rather than living in sin like young people nowadays.”

That’s true. I’m the one who said no. I didn’t even want to think of anything like that before I finished college. The idea of being married to a guy on the other side of the country was stupid.

I wonder whether I wasn’t just rejecting the very idea of Noah, rather than the distance, our age, and other things.

“You mean control her. Trap her with a bunch of kids, keep her home.”

“What’s wrong with that? Strong family values are important. And I went so wrong with you, God will not forgive me if I fail another girl.”

Hyacinth laughs. “Of course it’s about you. Your redemption. You’ve always seen Claire as another chance at making a little clone, huh?”

She turns to me, shaking her head. “I’m so damn sorry you had to deal with that.”

I realize something. My grandmother has been talking crap about me for the last twenty minutes, yes, but I’m no longer tense and stressed. It’s not me she’s shouting at.

I wonder why Hyacinth is here at all. She doesn’t like her mother. She doesn’t get along with her. Come to think of it, every single time she came home, wasn’t it just to do this? Reassert my rights, my freedom, my choices.

It never truly worked before. Except…I chose Rothford. I chose California. I applied there in the first place.

When she heard my grandmother was getting an operation, she probably just shrugged. If she’s here, it’s not for herself or her mother. It’s for me.

At long last, a nurse comes in, interrupting the shouting match. I’m glad she tells us my grandmother needs rest, so we have a reason to step out.

Awkward as fuck, not really knowing how to voice it, I reach out to my mother and take her hand. “Thanks. For coming.”