“I’ve got something for you,” I tell her, digging around in my backpack for a moment before pulling out an Amherst T-shirt.
Camille’s mouth drops open. “Oh, Marin, you didn’t have to do that!”
“A promise is a promise,” I say with a shrug. “I’m just sorry it’s not from Brown.”
“Are you kidding?” she says. Her grin is wide and white. “I’m so proud of you, honey.” She raises her eyebrows. “Are you proud of yourself?”
I consider that for a moment. “You know,” I say finally, “I actually really am.”
“Good,” Camille says, reaching out and squeezing my shoulder before nodding down the hallway toward Gram’s suite. “Let me know if you need anything, okay? She had a pretty good morning, but just in case.”
I nod. It’s the first time I’ve been back here on my own since the day Gram didn’t recognize me—Mom and I went together one morning, and Gracie tagged along with me the time after that—and I can feel my heart thumping unpleasantly as I make my way down the hallway.
It’s just Gram, I remind myself firmly. Whether she remembers you or not, it doesn’t change who she is to you.
“Hey there,” I say, knocking lightly on the door.
“Hi, Marin-girl.”
I let a breath out, relief coursing through me at the sound of my own name. Gram is sitting on the love seat with a biography of Katharine Graham in her lap. She’s wearing a linen shift dress and a pale pink cardigan, her hair pulled into a wispy knot at the base of her neck. The line of her lipstick is a tiny bit wobbly, but otherwise she looks like herself.
“Dad made a ciambellone,” I tell her once I’ve kissed her hello, hefting the Tupperware carrier up as evidence. It’s an Italian tea cake that she used to make when I was a kid, lemony and dense. I remember wandering around her yard with a hunk of it in my fist, Grandpa Tony’s toy poodle Lola trying to nibble bits of it out from in between my fingers. “He used your recipe, so he said he wants your honest opinion about how it turned out.”
“Oh, that’s lovely!” she says, sounding genuinely pleased. “I got that recipe from my mother-in-law, did I ever tell you that? She was not a nice lady, your great-grandmother, but the woman knew her way around a kitchen.”
I laugh, cutting us both slices and bringing them over to the coffee table, running my thumb over the edge of the delicate scalloped plate. “You got a crossword around here anywhere?” I ask. “I’ve been practicing.”
We pass the better part of our visit that way, filling in the puzzle and catching up on my last few weeks of school. I’m telling her about the dress I got for spring formal when something about her expression, a wary uneasiness, stops me. “Everything okay?” I ask.
Gram nods. “You know,” she says, and it sounds almost like an accusation, “I used to make a cake just like this.”
I bite my lip, trying to keep my face neutral. “I know, Gram,” I say gently. “It’s your recipe, remember?”
She narrows her eyes then, and I know all at once that I’ve lost her.
“It’s delicious, isn’t it?” I ask, instead of trying to get her to remember. It’s better not to push her when she gets like this, Mom explained after that last disastrous solo visit; she’ll come back on her own when she’s ready. It might be this afternoon, or it might not be. At some point she might not come back at all. “It tastes like spring.”
I spend the rest of my visit chattering on, cheerful, keeping my voice light and full of air: about summer finally coming and the tulip beds in front of Sunrise; about Katharine Graham, who I know from Ms. Klein was the first female publisher of a major American newspaper. Gram, for her part, seems content to listen to me, nibbling at her cake and nodding politely at appropriate breaks in my monologue like I’m a particularly gregarious stranger in a train station. As I’m getting up to leave, she touches my hand.
“I like you,” she says, her smile warm but somehow completely unfamiliar. “You remind me of myself.”
I tilt my head to the side, swallowing hard. “I do?”
Gram nods. “You’re a good girl,” she continues, “but you don’t always have to be so good.” Then she raises her eyebrows, mischievous. “Lord knows I wasn’t.”
For a second she looks like herself again, Gram who bought me my first journal and grew prize-winning roses and taught me to separate eggs over her immaculately polished stainless steel sink; then she blinks and it’s gone. I turn my hand over and squeeze hers for a moment, just gently, before letting go.
“I know,” I promise. “I’ll remember.”
Epilogue
The year’s final meeting of the feminist book club is on a warm Thursday afternoon at the beginning of June, a breeze blowing in through the open windows of Ms. Klein’s classroom and the trees exploding into verdant green outside. Elisa’s mom sends homemade tamales. Grace and I baked seven-layer bars. We read Warsan Shire’s Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, which was Lydia’s pick—and which comes with the benefit of letting us watch Beyoncé’s Lemonade, which is playing on a loop on a laptop at one corner of the room. Maddie and Bridget have an impromptu dance party going in one corner of the classroom, and I catch Dave singing along to “Formation” under his breath when he thinks no one is paying attention.
“You did something really good here, Marin,” Ms. Klein says quietly, coming to stand beside me with a paper cup of seltzer in one hand. The club is going to keep meeting next year, the underclassmen decided; Lydia nominated Elisa to be president, and she ran unopposed. I like the idea of the club continuing on without me—it’s dumb, maybe, but it kind of makes me feel like I’ll have a real legacy at Bridgewater beyond just being the girl who got Bex fired.
Of course, I’m not mad if that’s part of my legacy too.
Chloe and her parents pressed charges, which was hard for Chloe, but she felt like it was the right thing to do. The town paper ran a huge article on Bex, and Bridgewater caught a lot of heat for how they handled the whole situation. People were shocked by the administration’s actions—or lack thereof.
“How could something like this still happen today?” everyone said—but I guess that’s the reality, right? It does still happen.
Now I look around the classroom, my chest warm. Even Chloe came today, though she hadn’t read the book.
“Are you sure it’s okay?” she asked on the way over here, hesitating in the hallway. “To be crashing?”
“It’s not really about the book,” I promised, reaching for her hand and pulling her into the classroom. “I mean, it is and it isn’t.” Now I see her chatting with Elisa about the makeup artist who works on all Beyoncé’s videos, and I can tell she’s glad she came.
The only person who’s missing is Gray.
I sigh, smiling half-heartedly at Ms. Klein before drifting over to the food table. I thought he might show up for nostalgia’s sake—it’s our last meeting, after all—but I guess I chased him away for good. And sure, I apologized that day on the bleachers. But I know better than most people that sometimes an apology isn’t enough.