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for a down payment on a house.”
    “All right, then,” Ivy continued. “You don’t have to worry about working right now. If you’re here with me, you won’t have much in the way of expenses. You should be able to get by on what you have for quite a while. Plus, your girls are so little, and they’re going through a lot, too. They’ll need you around ’em for the time being. We’ll figure out what you can do for work once you’re ready. But right now, you’re not. Right now, you’re raw and grieving, and you’ve got to give yourself time to heal.”
    Josie was starting to feel a bit calmer. At least she was no longer breathing in ragged gasps.
    “And the last thing,” Ivy said, in a quieter tone, “is that you
have
to think about Tony. Talk about him, too. It’ll hurt something fierce, but you have to allow yourself to cry, to feel. You can’t keep it all bottled up and expect the sadness to go away. It won’t. If you keep it inside, it’ll eat away at you until there’s nothing left.”
    “Rose and Emily hate seeing me cry,” Josie began, but Ivy was already shaking her head.
    “With children, you’ve got to tell them the truth in terms that they can understand. Teach them that crying’s natural, and okay.Tell them you miss their daddy and you feel sad, and crying helps you feel better. In time, you’ll cry less and they’ll understand why you do when you do. It’s just a part of life. It’s how you’ll get through this, for yourself and for the girls.”
    Josie could feel the memories and the grief swelling behind the emotional barrier she was maintaining, and deep down, she knew her aunt was right. The empathy and emotional engagement of her aunt were surprising to Josie because her own mother had had little of either. When Josie was growing up, her mother’s answer to almost every difficult situation had been to pour herself another drink and retreat to her bedroom. As she listened to Ivy, Josie found herself marveling that someone could be so closely related to her mother and yet so different.
    “You know, you’re very good at sorting things out,” Josie told her. “Mom could never make sense of difficult situations. She always left that to me. I guess I learned after a while how to get
her
out of trouble, but I’ve never had to do that for myself.”
    “Abby was a good person underneath, but her drinking kept her from doing a lot of things,” Ivy said. “Kept her from coming home to visit, from keeping a good job and being the kind of mother you should’ve had. And that kept me from getting to know you while you were growing up.”
    “Well, as you say, we’ve got the chance now,” Josie said. She used her sleeve to dry her eyes. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

CHAPTER 5
    A T THE HOTEL BACK IN R UTLAND, A SHOWER AND A FRESH change of clothing did little to help Rose’s mood. Two martinis in rapid succession at dinner and a Kahlúa mudslide for dessert helped take the edge off, but even as Rose and her family resumed the drive back to Manhattan, she was still fuming.
    As usual, Sheldon was behind the wheel, and Alex was in the backseat with his nose stuck in a book.
    “Aren’t you going to say anything?” Rose asked her husband. “You’ve been staring straight ahead for hours.”
    “What do you want me to say?” He didn’t turn his head or meet her gaze, which only infuriated her further.
    “Something. Anything. How about, ‘Gee, it really sucks, what your mom decided to pull. It’s a good thing we don’t need her inheritance. We can just tell her to go to hell, if she isn’t already there.’ ”
    “Rose,” Sheldon sighed. “I get that you’re sad about your mom’s death, and it’s coming across as anger. You’re pissed about the whole scheme she’s concocted. And then the whole mess with the ashes. It was a bad day.” He paused, seeming to consider his next words carefully. “The thing is, I don’t think I can say what you’d like me