“Dean Fogarty was not your one and only chance at love. Heartbreak is a terrible thing, but it’s not a permanent condition. If you allow it, your heart will renew itself and find joy once again.”

Rather than argue with him about her mother, Natalie smiled at him. “Is that what happened for you?” she asked. “Was May Lin your second shot?”

“She was everything I needed,” he said. “Loving her was the crowning achievement of my life. Your mother was so preoccupied with other things that she never found the one thing I wanted for her.”

Natalie studied his lined, beloved face, seeing the wisdom and compassion that had guided her in ways she was only now discovering. “Was it hard for you,” she asked, “wishing your daughter would find a love like that?”

“As a parent, wanting so much for your child isn’t the hard part,” he said. “The hard part is convincing you to believe it. You need to believe in that possibility.”

She wasn’t clear on whether he thought he was speaking to her or to her mother.

The discharge nurse and social worker came in with prescription slips and final instructions, and at last it was time to go. Her grandfather didn’t speak as they took a taxi home. Despite the chilly day, he wanted to sit in the garden while the sun was out. Natalie brought the Mackinaw blanket and tucked it around him in the chaise.

“Do you think she was lonely?” she asked him, still thinking about her mother.

His eyes misted with memories as he seemed to drift through time. “She lived for the books that filled her days. And of course, she had the most delightful of daughters. It’s quite impossible to feel lonely when you’re in the presence of a delightful child.”

“Was I?” asked Natalie. “A delightful child? I don’t think I’d ever describe myself as delightful.”

“Well, of course no child is entirely, but yes. You certainly were. You were also an anxious child,” he said. “A worrier. You worried about matters beyond your years, many matters. Money. Air pollution. Stray cats. Your grades. And you worried about the people in the books you read. We thought it was charming, but you did lose sleep over the Boxcar Children.”

She smiled. “I still don’t know how they made it through Violet’s illness in that first book.” Then she looked around the fading garden, which was in a state of semineglect, the flowers spent and gone to seed. There were a few loose boards on the shed, and a broken windowpane, and her first thought was to call Peach. She knew she wouldn’t, though.

“May Lin always kept it so beautiful out here,” she said to her grandfather. “I’m going to make time to fix things up. Does that sound good?”

“I’ll ask her tonight,” said Grandy. “I’m sure she’d like to help.”