The morning my mother told me to wear “a little color,” I knew the lunch was not meant to feed me.
It was meant to use me.
By early November, Chicago had turned silver and sharp, the kind of cold that slid under your coat before you had time to brace for it. Lake wind pushed rain sideways against the windows of my small bookshop in Lincoln Park. Wet maple leaves clung to the glass like pressed flowers, and the bell over the front door kept trembling in the draft though no customers had come in for nearly an hour.
On the counter beside the register lay a stack of picture books for a school order.
Dragons in red scarves. Foxes asleep beneath patchwork quilts. A moon-faced baby tucked inside a painted cradle.
My hand stopped on that last cover.
For one awful second, the shop disappeared. The smell of paper and coffee and old floorboards vanished, and I was back in a hospital room where the lights never softened.
I saw the yellow blanket I had packed in my overnight bag. I saw the tiny knitted cap my husband, Thomas, had folded and refolded until the yarn lost its shape. I saw the name card the nurse had left blank because we had asked for one more minute before choosing between the two names we loved.
One more minute had become forever.
“Marin?” Oliver called from the storage room. “The Franklin Academy invoice is missing a signature.”
I shut the book too quickly, as if its soft blue cover had cut me.
“Leave it on my desk,” I said.
Oliver appeared between the shelves, tall and careful, with a clipboard tucked beneath one arm. He was twenty-eight, kind without being sentimental, and observant in a way that made him dangerous to people who preferred not to be known. He had been my part-time manager for two years, but after my daughter died, he had become the person who quietly changed the window display when it filled with baby books.
His eyes dropped to the cover under my hand.
Then he looked away.
“I’ll put it there,” he said softly.
The moment he disappeared, my phone buzzed against the counter.
Mother.
My throat tightened before I touched it.
The last time I had cried in front of Celeste Whitaker, she had patted my shoulder and said, “Pain becomes vulgar when you parade it.” She had said it while wearing cream silk and pearl earrings in my hospital room, standing three feet from the empty bassinet.
I answered anyway.
“Hello, Mom.”
“Marin,” she said, bright as cut crystal. “You remember lunch today.”
“Yes.”
“At one. Not one-fifteen. Your sister gets tired now.”
My fingers curled around the phone. “I know Sloane is pregnant.”
“Don’t say it like an accusation.”
“I didn’t.”
A pause followed, small and sharp. In the background I heard silverware being set down too deliberately. My mother arranged rooms the way judges arranged sentences.
“It’s a happy day,” she said. “Your father has been looking forward to seeing everyone together.”
“Then everyone will be there.”
“And bring Thomas.”
“He’s coming.”
“Good. And Marin?”
I closed my eyes.
“Wear a little color. Navy makes you look like you’re attending your own funeral.”
My daughter had been gone nine months.
