Chapter 20
The Daughter Who Left on Purpose
Rowan did not need courage to leave. She needed her mother not to make departure a wound.
At the airport planning café, Celia helped compare luggage allowances and did not ask for promises. Rowan noticed.
"You can be sad," she said.
"I am. It isn't an invoice."
They laughed, and the distance ahead became ordinary enough to survive.
Marianne interrupted with her own decision. She would sell their mother's flat. Half the letters would enter a family archive; the most private would be burned.
Celia objected on professional instinct.
"That is exactly why you don't decide alone," Marianne said.
Their mother's life was not an exhibition simply because Celia knew how to catalogue it.
They arranged to meet at the flat. In the final cupboard, Sam had found a rusted film can labelled MARLOWE WOMEN - 1989.