Althea’s passing was peaceful, but Marigold’s grief was not. It never is. It is a mistake to think of grief as an absence. It’s more of a dark, shadowy thing that sits in constant periphery, always there, always stealing air and making it hard to breathe. It’s a demon that she has fought every single day, but it will not leave. Every time she encounters something that she would have once shared with her grandmother—a new recipe, a good book, a bad dream—she sees the face of that grief instead.
