The room that had the half-circle couch she found and bought because it was, “just too perfect to pass up, buttercup.”
And it was. That couch was perfect. It had taken seven men, a pulley and who knew how much money to get it up there through a window. But Gran had seen it done.
She loved it up here.
I loved it up here.
And I sat in this very spot years ago after I became well enough to move around a bit after she saved me from my father. I also sat in this very spot after I called her and told her I had to get away, I just had to get away, and she flew me here.
Here. Home.
Here was where I put my father behind me.
Here was where I put my world behind me.
Here was where I got the call from a girlfriend who had moved to New York to do something in the fashion world (anything, she didn’t care, and she succeeded and was then working as a minion for flash-in-the-pan diva designer who thought he was everything who had recently been fired from his job designing clothes for discount department stores).
A girlfriend who told me Henry Gagnon was looking for an assistant and she knew I loved clothes, I was an admirer of his photos and she could talk to someone who could talk to someone who could maybe get me a meeting with him.
And here was where I took the next call when I learned she got me a meeting with him.
Here was where my life ended . . . twice, even as it started again . . . twice.
It still smelled like Gran here even though it had been years since she could get up to this room.
She was everywhere in Lavender House.
But mostly she was here.
And now she was gone.
And on that thought, it happened.
I knew it would happen. I was just glad it didn’t happen at her graveside, in front of people.
It happened there, the safest place I could be, the safest place I ever had, with Gran all around me.
The first time in over two decades when I let emotion overwhelm me and I wept loud, abhorrent tears that wracked my body and caused deep, abiding pain to every inch of me rather than releasing any.
I didn’t go out and buy a bottle of wine.
I certainly didn’t get a bucket of chicken (not that I was going to anyway).
And I didn’t watch the real housewives of anywhere on TV.
I fell asleep on that window seat with tears still wet on my face and with Gran all around me.
The safest place I could be.