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    Summary

    It was supposed to be a joke.

    It was supposed to be a joke they could fold into late nights, an easy thing to say when grief felt too big to hold. It was supposed to be a joke that lived on the couch, then in messages, then in polite stories told to strangers, the kind of joke that softens the edges of fear. It was supposed to be a joke.

    Seventy years later, the penthouse and the laughter were memories layered under dust. The garden behind Celine's old house had become the small, private place where five graves lay, pressed close to one another like a family that would not be separated. It wasn't a cemetery. It wasn't marked on any map. It was a patch of earth that remembered them.

    It was supposed to be a joke. It hadn't been. She made it one last time, only now it was a choice she could name and own. She closed her eyes, and the rain continued, and the little plot of earth in Celine's garden kept its silence.

    And Rumi had died for a second time.

    (Or, Rumi outlives her girls, and Celine, and after decades of being on her own shes finally reunited)

    Series
    Language:
    English
    Words:
    4,637
    Chapters:
    1/1
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    Kudos:
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