“I will.” I sigh and shake my head. “I already have.”

“You, Maximilian Hallowell, are an amazing man, and someday, you’re going to make some lucky woman very happy.”

“You just say the word and it can be you.” I don’t even care that I sound desperate. It’s the truth, and I need to know she understands.

“I’m in love with Nate,” she says simply.

“Are you going to be with him? You deserve commitment, marriage, happily ever after.”

“I don’t know.” She lifts her eyes to meet mine, and there’s more determination there than I’ve ever seen. “But what will or won’t happen doesn’t change that my heart is his, and I never should have asked you to settle for me when I knew that was true.”

“For me, it wouldn’t have been settling.”

“WOWEE!” GRANNY says, cocking her head at Liz. “You are so conflicted. If you could see your aura now.”

Liz rolls her eyes. “I’m going to go clean up dinner.”

“I’ll help,” Maggie says.

Mom looks at me. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

They let me out of the hospital this morning, and Mom insisted we hold Christmas Eve dinner at my house. I didn’t even object. The idea of spending Christmas alone and stuck in bed is miserable. If I can’t have Nate, all I want is to be by my family.

Liz and Maggie take stacks of dishes into the kitchen and quietly begin cleaning up, and Mom helps me out of the recliner they dragged into the dining room for me.

“I want to go to the living room,” I tell her.

She props me up on the couch, positioning pillows to make it more comfortable. Then she sits in the chair across from me.

“Mom, I need to confess something,” I say after a long silence.

“The only one you need to confess to is Jesus, Hanna, but you go down and talk to Father Douglas, and I have no doubt you’ll find the forgiveness you seek.”

I stifle an eye roll and take a deep breath. “I never wanted to marry Max for the right reasons. A girl should put on a man’s ring when she knows he’s the one she wants to be with. But I wasn’t thinking about who I wanted. I was just trying to find a way that everyone could be happy.”

“That sounds like you,” she says with a sigh. She picks up her bag from beside the chair and pulls her latest knitting project from it. “I just hate to see you alone.”

I want to tell her that I’m not alone. That I have Nate. But I’m not sure I’m okay with sacrificing his happiness for my own.

“Did you sleep with Meredith’s dad?”

Mom’s hands freeze in the middle of a stitch, and I have to remind myself to breathe while I wait for her answer. She starts working again without looking at me. “I never cheated on your father. Malcolm and I were friends.” She sighs and finally lifts her head to meet my eyes. “You girls think I’m crazy for wanting you to get married, but you don’t know how difficult it is to live in this world without a man.”

I cross my arms and wait for her to finish, but my stomach hurts.

“I miss your father so much,” she whispers, and her eyes fill with tears. “Not only because he was my husband and the father to my children. He took care of things. Life was so much easier when he was around, and when he left, I didn’t know how to do anything. I’d never paid the bills or balanced the checkbook. I’d never changed my own wiper blades. I never realized just how much your father took care of me until he was gone, and Malcolm was a friend, and he helped me with those little things. I had no idea he thought our relationship was more than friendship until he left his wife. And we tried for a while, but then I saw his true colors and…” She sighs. “Good men aren’t so easy to find, you know.”

“Mom, if you didn’t know how to do any of those things, wouldn’t you want your daughters to wait on marriage? To be single and independent for a while first?”

She gives me a hard look then stands to take my hand in hers. “Single and independent are words women use to make themselves feel better about being lonely and overwhelmed. I want all of my girls to marry a good man and have a good life. I don’t think that makes me a bad person.”

“We can’t just marry anyone and have what you had with Dad,” I say softly.

Her smile is sad, a little hopeful. “But Max would give you that. You’d never be alone and you’d always have someone at your side to help you through the tough days.”

“I already have lots of people to help me through the tough days.” I shift our hands so mine is squeezing hers, and her shoulders rise on her inhale. “And I count you among them.”

She drops her gaze to our joined hands. “I know I’m far from perfect. Some days, I feel like I’ve failed each of you girls in a different way.”

“You didn’t fail me, Mom. I just…”

“You just felt like I wouldn’t love you if you weren’t thin. That sounds like a failure to me.”

“No,” I say firmly. “I knew you’d always love me. You pressured me to lose weight, to be thin, that’s true. But I knew you wanted the best for me, and I never doubted that you loved me.”

She sniffs and forces a smile. “If you want to raise these babies on your own, I will support you. Whatever you need, whatever my grandchildren need. You just say the word.”