I had come back to Grandma’s house just outside of Blueford after my engagement ended. Two months ago, I was choosing centerpieces. Now I was learning skillet care while trying to figure out how to exist with a heart in pieces.
Grandma never asked questions. She simply placed a chipped mug of coffee in front of me and launched into a story about her mother’s pan—the one that made it through the Great Depression and every sorrow since.
“If you take care of it,” she said softly, “it’ll last forever. Same goes for your heart.”
I tried to laugh, but it came out thin and shaky. She didn’t press. She just sat with me, warm and steady, like an anchor in a storm I didn’t know how to navigate.
A week later, the sadness clung like humidity. I offered to do the grocery run. She handed me her list, scribbled in her careful cursive. At the bottom, just after “bacon” and “onions,” was one extra line: “something sweet for your soul.”
A lemon tart from Horace’s Bakery seemed like the right fit.
At the bakery, I ran into Sadie—my old best friend, once my maid of honor, who had vanished the moment Beckett walked out. I spotted her first and ducked behind a cereal display, but she saw me.
“Mariana Rose?” she called. No one else ever used my full name like that.
I turned around slowly, bracing for anger. But she looked… wrecked. Puffy eyes. Slumped shoulders.
She apologized, right there in aisle five. Said she hadn’t known how to be there for me. That she had let guilt become a wall.
