For a long time, she and G just stared at each other. In the mirror, Joey glimpsed her face streaked in mascara.

“Good,” her grandmother finally said. “There we have it then.”

“There we have it?” Snot trickled toward Joey’s lip. Every inch of her toilet paper had been saturated. She grabbed a tissue from the box G had placed in her lap. “But it was heads.”

“The coin toss.” G laughed. “Just a silly thing to get the answer out of you. You see, if it had been Leo, you’d have felt relieved. We’re not actually picking a man from a coin toss, my darling. That’s insane. So here it is. Settled.”

“Here it is, G? Settled? I just married the wrong one.”

“But you still have a choice, my darling. That’s the lucky thing. We don’t always have choices, Joey. My parents and Benjamin did not. Sometimes life chooses for you. So when you are presented with a choice in life, you thank God, because it’s an opportunity to be happy. And you don’t squander it.”

“I don’t know, G. I don’t want to be like my mother, but look at me. I’m exactly like her.”

“Your mother has her faults, to be sure. So do we all. Even you who has tried so hard to be perfect. You know, Joey, I think perfect is overrated.”

Joey remembered how Leo had said something similar. “But how am I supposed to be with Leo? He has a son on the other side of the world. He lives on boats in the middle of oceans. If I’m with Leo, I’ll have to travel a lot. I won’t be able to be here in Florida as much with you.”

G poured them glasses of water from a carafe on a side table. “You love to travel, Joey. You were always counting down to vacations from that awful firm. Climbing mountains, handstands on beaches, tightroping…”

“Ziplining,” Joey corrected, an unexpected laugh gurgling out of her.

G frowned. “I did worry, you know, but that’s not the point. And then you went to Bali, and I was so happy for you, my darling, to have that freedom and sunshine you’d longed for. But you only stayed a few months before returning to Florida for me, when I had my heart surgery. And then you ran into Grant. So who knows what you might have otherwise chosen, or where. Now your world is wide open again. And I think it will suit you.” G nodded. “Yes, I truly think it will suit you.”

“I don’t know, G.”

“I do. And this is what it is to follow your heart.”

Thunder crackled beyond the window. “But that’s just it. My heart might say Leo—it does say Leo—but it said Leo before. And then he broke it.”