Chapter 8
Elowen returned to work a week later.
I told her she didn’t have to.
She looked offended.
“My mother didn’t raise me to lose my income because your wedding collapsed.”
Fair.
I apologized.
Not for the wedding.
For failing Nora.
Elowen frowned.
“You sent flowers.”
“That’s not the same as visiting.”
“No.”
I had known Nora for decades and let illness turn her into a name attached to updates.
Comfortable distance.
She still saw danger inside my house and acted.
I should have seen her before death.
No redemption available there.
Only lesson.
Elowen asked for one thing.
Her mother’s funeral flowers had been destroyed.
She wanted the crushed bouquet.
I had preserved what remained.
Maura’s heel had broken stems and bruised petals.
“Why?”
Elowen touched one flattened white rose.
“Because she bought them herself.”
Nora had chosen her own funeral flowers before entering hospice.
That made the destruction worse.
Elowen did not want replacements.
She wanted those.
I gave them to her.
She dried the surviving petals.
No dramatic shrine.
A small glass bowl in her apartment.
May you like
Her grief.
Her method.
