Sophie's farm had not changed, but the people in it had. They sat on the porch of the main house, a structure they had built themselves fifteen years ago, when Sophie and Clara had finally saved enough to buy the land outright, watching the sun set over fields that were now worked by younger hands, by apprentices who called Sophie "mentor" and meant it.
They were fifty. Fifty, and the mirror had become a stranger they were learning to negotiate with. Fifty, and their children, those who had them, were gone, scattered to colleges and gap years and apartments they couldn't quite afford. The house was quiet in a way that felt both like freedom and like grief.
Marcus sat in the rocking chair, his knee aching from an old running injury he refused to acknowledge. Diana had stayed home; her mother was ill, Parkinson's stealing her piece by piece, and Marcus had come alone to this reunion, this intervention, this whatever-it-was that Sophie had summoned them for. He was still running the nonprofit, still broke, still happier than he had any right to be. His hair was gray. His hands were spotted. He had started writing poetry, terrible poetry, which he read to no one.
"I asked Clara to leave," said Sophie.
The statement landed like a stone. They turned, Tyler and Michael, who had raised two adopted children who were now twenty-two and nineteen and living their own lives; Oliver, who had never married, who had become something of a legend in accessibility tech, whose company had finally succeeded and then been bought by Google, which he had sworn he would never sell to; Priya, who had become the director of the WHO's maternal health division, who had buried James three years ago, a heart attack at fifty-two, sudden and unfair; and Jacob, who had married Julie, who had buried her, who had written three more books and was now the kind of philosopher people quoted on Instagram without reading.
"She's gone?" asked Priya. Her voice was gentle. She had become gentle, the way people do who have seen too much suffering to waste energy on harshness.
"She's in the apartment in town. We're separated. Not divorced. Just... breathing." Sophie looked out at her fields, her life's work, the soil she had tended for twenty years. "The kids are gone. The farm runs itself. We looked at each other across the breakfast table and realized we had nothing left to say that wasn't about logistics. Who's picking up the CSA boxes. Whether we need to rotate the south field. And I thought—is this it? Is this the rest of my life? Logistics?"
"So you asked her to leave?" said Emily. She had come from New York, from a retrospective at the MoMA that had sold out for six months, from a life that looked perfect on Instagram and felt, she had admitted to Sophie last night over whiskey, like a gilded cage she had built herself.
"I asked for space. She gave it. She's better at boundaries than I am." Sophie laughed, but it was wet, broken. "I'm fifty years old. I thought by now I'd know how to be married. I thought the hard part was the beginning. The coming out. The fighting for the right to exist. But the hard part is the middle. The years. The way love becomes... furniture. Useful, familiar, invisible."
"I know," said Tyler. He and Michael had not separated, but they had come close, twice. The first time, when the kids were teenagers and the house was a war zone of hormones and slammed doors. The second time, last year, when Michael had said, "I don't know if I like you anymore," and Tyler had said, "I don't know if I like me either." They were in therapy. They were trying. They were learning, at fifty, how to date each other again.
"Is that the answer?" asked Oliver. He had a glass of wine he wasn't drinking. He had stopped drinking three years ago, then started again, then stopped. His hands shook slightly, the early tremor of something neurological they were monitoring. "Is that what matters most at fifty? Learning to live with the furniture? Learning to see it again?"
"I think it's forgiveness," said Jacob. He had aged the most visibly, his hair white, his face lined with the kind of deep creases that come from laughter and grief in equal measure. "Forgiving yourself for the ways you failed. The people you hurt. The time you wasted thinking you had more time."
"There's so much I would do differently," said Marcus. "So many choices. I was so sure I was right. About everything. The nonprofit. The way I raised the kids. The way I loved Diana. I was so sure."
"That's the cruelty of it," said Priya. "We make our choices with the information we have at the time. Then we spend the rest of our lives knowing more and being unable to go back."
They sat with that. The crickets started, the evening chorus, the sound of a world continuing regardless of their regrets.
"I saw Mrs. Deluca," said Emily. "Before she died. Last winter."
They turned. Mrs. Deluca had passed away in March, quietly, in her sleep, in the condo in Florida she had finally made peace with. They had all gone to the funeral, scattered among the mourners, grown adults crying for a woman who had taught them to read but had, in the end, taught them so much more.
"She asked me the question," said Emily. "One last time. She was ninety-two. Her mind was going. She didn't always know who I was. But she asked."
"What did you say?" asked Sophie.
"I said I didn't know. That I was still figuring it out. That I thought I had known at twenty-eight, at the wedding, but I was wrong." Emily paused, her hands tight around her wine glass. "And she said... she said that's the point. That we keep thinking we have the answer, and the answer keeps changing, and that's not failure. That's growth."
"Growth," said Oliver. "At fifty. When everything hurts and the world is on fire and the kids are gone and the marriage is tired and the body is betraying us. We're supposed to be grateful for growth?"
"Yes," said Jacob. "That's exactly when we're supposed to be grateful. Because it's not over. We're still here. We're still asking. We're still capable of surprise."
Sophie stood. She walked to the edge of the porch, looking out at her fields, at the life she had built, at the love she was learning to see again, the furniture she was trying to reupholster.
"I think the answer is courage," she said. "At fifty. The courage to keep going when you know how much it costs. The courage to be alone. The courage to try again. The courage to admit you were wrong and not let it destroy you."
"I think it's curiosity," said Tyler. "Staying curious about your partner. About yourself. About what's possible."
"I think it's acceptance," said Michael, who had been quiet, who had been listening. "Accepting that you did your best. That your best was sometimes not enough. That you get to keep going anyway."
They sat until the stars came out, these old friends, these children who had become adults who were becoming elders. They talked about their children—their triumphs and failures, the ways they had exceeded expectations and the ways they had broken hearts. They talked about their bodies—the medications, the procedures, the humiliations of aging that no one had warned them about. They talked about their parents, dying or dead, the role reversal of becoming the caregiver to the people who had once cared for you.
And when the whiskey was gone and the fireflies had emerged, they went inside to sleep in rooms that smelled like lavender and old wood, and Sophie lay next to an empty space that was still warm from Clara's body, and she whispered into the dark:
"I'm still here. I'm still asking. I'm still growing."
And somewhere, she hoped, Mrs. Deluca heard her, and smiled.