Walt came over too. So did Priya and her husband and the toddler, who had learned to say “Miss Di” and said it approximately four hundred times over the course of the afternoon. Marcus stopped by with his parents for pie.
My little dining room was so crowded that we had to pull in the folding table from the garage and two of the kitchen chairs and the cedar bench from under the maple tree.
Nobody minded.
Before we ate, Rachel tapped her glass with a fork.
“I want to say something,” she said.
Everyone quieted down.
“A year ago,” Rachel said, “my sister was in my kitchen in Louisville, watching a moving truck pull into her driveway on a security camera. And I watched her decide, right there, who she was going to be for the rest of her life.”
She looked at me.
“Diane, I’ve loved you since the day Mom brought you home from the hospital. But I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder of you than I was that day. You didn’t fold. You didn’t apologize. You didn’t ask anybody for permission to protect what was yours.”
