Page 105 of The Seven Rings
In sleep, Sonya murmured, “Marianne.”
In the morning, she thought of the dream, so clear in her mind.Somehow, they were showing her pieces of the lives lived. The love, devotion, sorrows, and joys.
She’d hold them all. She’d write it all down as she had all the others. He had come home, Hugh Poole, home to the woman who waited with two lives inside her. He came home in the ship he’d built and named for her.
Grateful for the dream, she went downstairs to find her mother already sitting on the deck with coffee.
“You’re up early.”
“Routine. I fed Pye and Yoda. And though the ice cream tempted, I held off. Come join me.”
“Be right there.”
She got coffee for herself, then went out, sat. Sighed.
“I don’t do this often enough,” Winter said. “Sit out in the morning with coffee, even on weekends. It’s alwaysYou should do this, or that. Get this done. I’m going to do a change-up there, too.
“Someone watered the pots before I came out,” she added. “I thought to do it for you, so I checked them. It’s such an odd thing.”
“There’s odd, and then there’s Lost Bride Manor normal. We’re pretty sure it’s Eleanor. She waters the solarium plants.”
“You seem well adjusted to Lost Bride Manor normal. I’m working on it. I have to tell you something.”
“Is everything all right?” On alert, Sonya shifted to her, reached out.
“Yes. Nothing’s wrong. I did something. I didn’t mention it because it felt a little silly. Honestly, a lot silly. I have this picture I took of your dad holding you when you were a baby. The way he looked at you, and you at him. You were about three months old, and your eyes were already going green from that infant blue.”
“I know the photo. You have it in your room.”
“You’d been crying—I’d forgotten that. Just fussy, and he picked you up. I remember now like it was yesterday. He picked you up, and held you. He said, ‘Daddy’s got you, baby girl.’”
As emotion filled her throat, Winter paused a moment.
“You stopped fussing, and looked at him as he looked at you. It was love, and I snapped the picture.
“I love that picture. I made a copy, framed it. I told myself I meant to give it to you, but that’s not what I really meant to do.”
“Then what?”
“I took it out last night, and I put it on the dresser. I felt silly, but I said, out loud, that it was for Clover. That I’d brought it for her to have, to see her son holding his daughter. To see the love between them. And to see the man he’d grown to be.”
“Mom. Mom, that’s not silly. That’s so kind, kind and loving.”
“This morning, it wasn’t there, but where I’d put it?”
With her eyes damp, Winter had to take a breath before turning to Sonya.
“There was a little frame, and inside a clover. A four-leaf clover that had been dried and preserved. More? When I picked it up, not jolted but so touched, my phone played. Alanis Morissette. ‘Thank U.’”
“It’s beautiful. What you did, what she did. It’s beautiful.”
“I started thinking how I wish I’d known her, then I realized, in a way, I do. I do know her. And I’m so glad she’s here with you. I can’t be, and it eases my mind knowing she can, and is.”
In reassurance, Clover went to Colbie Caillat with Sheryl Crow. “I’ll Be Here.”
Smiling, nodding, Winter sipped her coffee. “It’s going to be a beautiful day.”
“Let’s go wake Cleo up with a bowl of ice cream.”
