Elizabeth's POV
I set the scarf down gently, the scent still clinging to my fingers as I closed the drawer after picking up the notebook. I didn't open it. Not tonight. Some things needed stillness. Reverence.
Dinner felt like memory. Comfort food and candlelight. Aunt Mara moved about the kitchen with practiced ease, humming under her breath.
We talked about nothing and everything. About childhood mishaps and her garden and the time I broke a window trying to do a cartwheel on the porch.
"You were a whirlwind," Aunt Mara laughed. "Esme would just sit and watch you with that calm look. Like she already knew you'd get us in trouble."
I grinned. "She was the quiet one, but she always had a comeback."
"I miss that," Aunt Mara said, her tone softening. "The way you two would mirror each other without even trying."
I glanced down at my plate, my appetite gone for a moment. "She grounded me," I said.
"Like... even when I was loud and messy and too much for everyone else, she made it okay."
Aunt Mara reached across the table, her fingers brushing mine. "That's what love does."
After dinner, I sat curled on the couch with a cup of warm tea. The scent of chamomile and something floral drifted through the room.
Aunt Mara leaned back in her chair, the glow from the reading lamp softening the lines on her face.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
Aunt Mara disappeared for a moment, then returned with a small, carefully preserved box. She set it down between us.
She brought out a box. Small, carefully preserved. Inside were ribbons, old photographs, a baby bracelet with my name on it, and another with Esme's. A pair of ballet slippers — worn at the toes. And a folded letter with my mom's handwriting on the envelope. I didn't open it. Just seeing her name written out was enough for now.
"She used to sing to you both at night," Aunt Mara said. "Even when she was exhausted. Your dad would sit by the door, pretending not to cry."
I smiled, heart swelling.
"And when you were babies," she added, "you had your own language. Esme would babble something, and you'd answer. No one else could decode it."
I chuckled. "I remember that. Mom said we had a whole dictionary of nonsense."
Aunt Mara's eyes twinkled. "It made perfect sense to you two."
---
Later, after brushing my teeth and borrowing one of her oversized t-shirts, I crawled into bed in the guest room. Aunt Mara came in and sat beside me, holding the photo of my parents — young, laughing, wild-eyed.
"They were so full of life," she said. "Your mom had this laugh... like wind chimes in a storm."
"She never stopped believing in people," I murmured. "Even when they didn't deserve it."
We sat there a while in silence, just holding memories between us.
"Thank you," I said.
"For what?"
"For keeping all this. For keeping them alive."
She smiled. "It was never hard. You carried them with you anyway."
---
That night, I fell asleep to the scent of old perfume and rain.
No haunting memories. No nightmares. Just a quiet peace.
And the knowledge that love never really leaves. It just lingers — in scarves, and stories, and tea shared in the soft hush of night.