He had said it more than once.
He had meant it.
The margins had never materialized.
He was gone before they did.
I had thought about this.
I had thought about it for two years, the specific fact that Rose had a thing she had always wanted to see and that time was not infinite and that I was her granddaughter and that perhaps the margins I could create were the relevant ones.
I am not a person with a great deal of money.
A dental assistant’s salary in Raleigh is not a path to early retirement.
But I had been putting away small amounts in a specific account I labeled Rose for two years.
Not a large amount per paycheck.
Enough that, two years later, there was enough.
Two tickets to Florida.
One hotel with a room that looked at the water.
One week.
I planned to tell her at her kitchen table with coffee.
This is where we had our important conversations.
She had been at the table when I told her about my college acceptance.
She had been at the table when I told her Edwin had died, which she already knew but which I had driven over to sit with her through.
She had been at the table when I told her I was coming home from Charlotte.
The table was where things happened.
I sat down.
I had the folder with the printouts.
I had been going to say something prepared.
I was not going to just put the folder on the table.
But she looked at me when I sat down and she said: what is it?
Just that.
The specific question of a woman who has been reading people for eighty-six years and who knows a significant thing is coming.
I said: I saved up. I want to take you somewhere.
She said: where?
I said: Florida. The coast. I want to take you to see the ocean.
She was very still for a moment.
She said: the ocean.
She said it like a word she had not said in a long time.
Like something she had kept in the back of her mind for years and that was now being brought to the front.
Then she cried.
Rose does not cry easily.
She cried at Edwin’s funeral.
She cried when I graduated.
She cries at certain hymns, the ones that Edwin loved.
