“Her what?” she finally asked.

“Grandma wrote about wanting to open a bakery,” Sadie said. “It was her dream. She had these adorable logos sketched out and everything. She thought her specialty could be pie.”

Melissa sighed, “Well, strange. I don’t recall her ever mentioning it.”

“She wrote about it quite a bit in her diary,” Sadie prompted again.

“I know how much pleasure she got out of baking for the Fourth of July bake sale every year, but no, she never talked about opening up a bakery of her own.”

Lincoln abandoned his cartoon and jumped on her lap. She ran her fingers through his curls.

“Well, she did mention that Grandpa Hank was kind of against it.”

“I guess that makes sense. Grandpa Hank was a little old-fashioned and they weren’t really living in the big city, now were they.”

“But Grandpa Hank always told me to follow my dreams, before he died,” Sadie ruminated. “Why didn’t he encourage his own wife?”

“I’m sure these details are somewhere in her diary, but you know your grandpa loved your grandma beyond measure and always wanted to spoil her to bits. He probably worried about her being overwhelmed, overworked. I know he wanted to give her the best life imaginable.”

Sadie thought of her own Ethan’s startlingly similar words. She delicately stroked the yellowed diary pages between her fingertips.

Holding someone back was not the same as taking care of them. Grandma Hester knew this, Sadie knew this, and she believed Ethan knew it too.

“Luckily times have changed,” her mother declared briskly.

Had they?

“Sadie, how are you really doing? Your dad and I miss you.”

Sadie thought about the pregnancy scare, the bakery, the joys and trials of marriage, her friendship with Renee.

“It’s been…” she hesitated, settling on, “good.” Good felt right. Hard but a good life.

“I dreamed the baby was a girl,” Melissa offered.

Sadie sighed. “A girl. I secretly dream that too. Well, I’d love either really.”

They chatted for a few more minutes, mostly about Lincoln’s new habits and quirks (he’d recently called Sadie by her first name, having heard a cashier use it, and she and Ethan had burst into laughter), before Sadie said, “Mom, I have to go. I don’t know if you heard but we’re getting a hurricane.”

“Has the tropical storm that veered by us made its way all the way up to Maine? Just like ’eighty-five?” Her mom suddenly sounded a wee bit frantic. “How did I not know this? Do you want to catch a train down to D.C. from Boston? You three can stay with us until the storm passes.”

“I think it’s a little late for that, but thanks. I’m sure we’ll be fine. Meteorologists love to blow these things out of proportion.”

“Just be careful, okay?” Sadie was surprised to hear the seriousness in Melissa’s voice.