“You look well,” her mother said, which was where she always started.
“I feel well.”
Rosalina looked around the apartment—the bare walls and empty cupboards, waiting for someone else to put their mark on them. “So it’s true. You’re leaving.”
“Yes.”
“For Pine Ridge.” Her mother said the name carefully.
“Yes.”
A silence. Her mother moved to the window and stood with her back to the room, looking at the building opposite, the same view Morgan had looked at for years.
“Is that where you met him?”
“Yes.”
“He seems… solid,” her mother said finally.
“He is.”
“Irish.”
“His father’s side, yes.”
“Something you have in common then.”
Morgan waited, the way she’d learned to wait with her mother—not pushing, not filling the space, just letting it be what it was.
Her mother turned from the window. She looked at Morgan with an expression Morgan had never quite seen before, her careful composure softening into something more genuine.
“You look like him, you know,” she said quietly. “Your father. You have his eyes.”
“That’s what Frank said. He said he was a good man.”
Her mother nodded. “He was. It wasn’t his fault,” she said, casting her eyes downward. “He didn’t know about you.”
It was as close to an apology as Rosalina DeStefano had ever come. Morgan recognized it for what it was.
“I know,” Morgan said. “Frank told me that too.”
Her mother looked at her for a moment. Then she looked toward the door through which Patrick had gone.
“He’s in love with you.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“The same way I know you’re in love with him,” Rosalina said with a slight smile. “It’s in your eyes when you look at him.”
Morgan said nothing, because that was a truth she hadn’t even admitted to herself yet.
“I hope you do better with it than I did.”
On impulse, Morgan crossed the room and put her arms around her mother, who was stiff for a moment, then returned the embrace.
It didn’t fix everything, but it was something.
“I should go,” her mother said when they parted. At the door she paused, looked back, and said simply, “Take care of yourself and… call me once in a while.”