“I am relieved,” she continued. “I am angry. I am tired. I am grieving a friendship that ended years ago and a daughter I thought I might get back.”
Evelyn’s name did not need to be spoken.
Brooke lowered her head.
Clara looked at her. “Do not promise me forever.”
Brooke lifted her eyes.
“Promise me tomorrow,” Clara said. “Then keep promising one day at a time.”
Brooke nodded.
“I promise tomorrow.”
“Good.”
The first gray light appeared behind the windows.
Christmas morning arrived without celebration.
There were no gifts beneath the tree except the scarf in Brooke’s car. She brought it inside after sunrise. It was deep green, soft wool, with a narrow gold thread woven through the edge.
Clara touched it.
“It is beautiful.”
“I wanted you to have something warm.”
“Then put it on me.”
Brooke wrapped the scarf around Clara’s neck. Her fingers brushed the old woman’s hair, and for a second neither moved.
Clara’s eyes filled.
Brooke stepped back.
“Too tight?”
“No.”
“Too loose?”
“No.”
Clara looked at herself in the dark window. The scarf brightened her face.
“Your grandmother chose that color for me once,” she said.
Brooke glanced toward the blue box. “You knew her before my mother?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Clara sat beneath the window.
“Your grandmother worked at a garment factory with me when we were girls. We were both twenty. She had just come from Alabama. I had come from Georgia. We shared a room, a lunch, and one pair of gloves during our first winter.”
Brooke listened.
“Evelyn was born years later. Ruth could not afford a hospital, so I sat with her through the delivery. I held your mother before Ruth did.”
Brooke’s expression softened.
“She loved you,” Clara said. “Even when she hurt you. That is the part people do not understand. Love does not make every action loving.”
“Did you love her?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still?”
Clara looked at the snow beginning to gather on the porch rail.
“Yes.”
Brooke swallowed. “How can you?”
