I wish I could go back and do it all over again, to know that I didn’t need to compete with Margot over Emily. To know that I was allowed to simply be her grandmother, to show her a different side of life. To make her see that she had choices, could be whoever she wanted to be. To embrace the weird, the odd, the absolutely crazy side of her personality—the one that went to the park in a swimming costume, Wellington boots and superhero cape! To be the girl who wasn’t afraid to climb trees, swim in the ocean, challenge people and question it all.

I loved Emily for her passion, her madness, her desire to always push for more, but I was so afraid of influencing her, of getting in between her and her mother. Which, of course, I now see was ridiculous. How could I be afraid of not being loved or not being wanted?

I never really understood Margot, her decision to become completely reliant on a man. I thought it was weak, it was needy and made her too vulnerable. After everything I had battled with, alone. After all the lessons I’d tried to teach her, and she gave up her education, her career, her independence for him. I didn’t understand that she was making her decision based entirely on what was inside her own heart. I didn’t understand that she looked at the world with different eyes, with different dreams, than I did.

I wish I hadn’t convinced myself that Margot didn’t need me, once she found Peter. Once she fell in love and gave up everything to be a wife and a mother. Because I understand now it’s what she wanted. She was not me, just as Emily is not me.

The first time I saw them all together—Margot, Peter and Emily, just after she was born—it made me miss Noah, like a physical pain that would not leave me be. It made me miss what could have been and, of course, I couldn’t help but think about whether I should have said yes. He was the one person who knew me, the real me, and never tried to change it. He understood why I said no (three times, the poor man!), but he didn’t give up. He must have thought that one day I would give in to his relentless offerings of love, to finally realize that it was the right thing to do, that he would make me happy.

I have made so many mistakes in my life. Agonized over too many decisions, and quite possibly this has done me more harm than good. Regret is nothing but a mess of emotion that we can do nothing about. Fear is altogether different. The fear I have always carried with me, of being left alone. After Gigi died it made me cling tighter to Margot. Made me rush back to Noah, only for me to leave him once again. It was unfair of me, but I didn’t know at the time how much more pain was still to come.