CHAPTER 2 – BEFORE THE LILIES FELL
Margaret had not always been a grieving mother.
Before Daniel died, she had been many things: a retired music teacher, a widow, a woman who overwatered herbs and pretended not to enjoy neighborhood gossip. She baked lemon bread when anxious. She ironed pillowcases because her mother had done it. She kept a Christmas ornament Daniel made in kindergarten wrapped in tissue paper long after the paint flaked off.
Daniel was her only child.
His father, Paul, died when Daniel was sixteen, leaving Margaret and her son to build a smaller but honest life together. Daniel became the kind of young man who fixed loose porch lights, called when he arrived home, and carried groceries for strangers. He had his father’s patience and Margaret’s stubbornness.
He also had secrets.
Not cruel ones, Margaret thought now. Private ones.
After Daniel died, she learned how little mothers truly know about adult sons. She found receipts from cities he never mentioned. A photograph of a lakeside cabin. A silver bracelet in his desk that did not belong to anyone she recognized. And one folded note with only three words written in Daniel’s handwriting:
Tell her soon.
Margaret had stared at that note for hours.
Tell who?
Tell what?
She asked his friends gently, then less gently. No one knew. Or no one admitted knowing. Daniel had been seeing someone, perhaps, but he had never brought her home. His closest friend, Mark, said Daniel had seemed happy the month before the accident, distracted in a good way.
“He said he had news,” Mark told Margaret after the funeral. “Big news.”
Margaret waited for the news to reveal itself.
Nothing came.
Life reduced itself to rituals.
Sunday lilies.
Coffee gone cold.
Voice mails she played only once a month because hearing his voice felt like opening a wound and calling it comfort.
Then came this morning.
A girl at his grave.
A baby in her arms.
He was her father.
Margaret lowered herself slowly onto the damp grass, not caring about the knees of her black coat. She placed the lilies beside the stone with shaking hands.
The young woman watched her carefully, as if afraid any sudden movement might make Margaret reject the truth.
“What’s your name?” Margaret asked.
“Claire,” the girl whispered. “Claire Bennett.”
Margaret looked at the baby again.
“And hers?”
The young woman’s face crumpled.
“Lily.”
Margaret closed her eyes.
Of course.
White lilies in her hand.
May you like
A living Lily in Claire’s arms.
Daniel had always believed the universe had a sense of humor, even when it was being cruel.
