You are going to be tired. Three babies at sixty-one is not what anyone would call a restful retirement plan. But I have seen what you are made of. I have seen you survive things that should have crushed you. I have seen you choose love even when love cost everything.
So now go be their grandmother.
And when they need it, go be their whole world.
Your Collie
Dorothy lowered the pages into her lap and cried for the first time in weeks—not the hot, shattered crying of the hospital hallway, but the slow, full crying of a person whose body finally believes the fight has turned.
When she was done, she folded the letter carefully and placed it beside the first in her purse.
Then she stood at the grave.
“You saved them,” she said softly. “You really did.”
Wind moved through the trees.
Dorothy laid her palm on the warm granite and let herself imagine, just for one impossible second, that somewhere beyond everything reasonable and provable, her daughter knew.
Then she turned and walked back to the car.
Three infants were waiting.
And for the first time since the night the hospital lights turned her life in two, Dorothy was bringing them home for good.