Chapter 27 - The End
Marin was born four months later.
Seven pounds three ounces.
A loud, healthy girl with a narrow strip of dark-blond hair that refused to lie flat.
Labor lasted eleven hours.
Auberon stayed beside me.
No Fenella.
No police.
No locked doors.
My mother came three days later after asking first.
Mrs. Hale brought soup and left it on the porch because I was sleeping.
No one entered with a key.
That became ordinary faster than I expected.
Six weeks after Marin’s birth, I stood in the backyard holding her against my shoulder.
The old shed was gone.
Grass had not fully grown over the rectangle yet.
Auberon had wanted to build something there.
A gazebo.
Raised beds.
Storage bench.
I kept saying later.
That morning he carried two wooden garden boxes across the yard.
“Decision made?”
I looked at him.
“Vegetables.”
He set them down.
“Which?”
“Tomatoes.”
“You kill tomatoes.”
“That was one year.”
“Three.”
I ignored him.
Marin made a tiny grunting sound against my shoulder.
I adjusted the blanket.
Auberon stopped.
“You hungry?”
“Always.”
He went inside.
Returned with toast and scrambled eggs balanced on a plate.
He handed it to me.
I stared at him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re doing the face.”
“What face?”
“The shed face.”
I looked at the food.
Then at him.
“No.”
Not the shed.
Just memory.
I ate a piece of toast.
Auberon sat on the grass.
Marin slept.
The garden boxes waited empty.
Fenella’s appeal on limited sentencing issues was still moving through normal procedure.
The conviction remained in place unless a court ruled otherwise.
We did not discuss it that morning.
Her letters went through counsel and remained unread.
Maybe one day that would change.
Not today.
Auberon’s relationship with his mother existed now only as history, legal boundaries and whatever private feelings he carried.
I stopped asking whether he still loved her.
Of course he did in some form.
Love had never been the same thing as access.
Then Marin woke.
Her face scrunched.
She cried.
I shifted her into both arms.
Auberon stood.
“Bottle?”
“In the kitchen.”
He started toward the house.
Then stopped at the back door.
“Want me to bring it out or come inside?”
That question was so small I almost laughed.
Choice.
Real choice.
“Bring it out.”
“Okay.”
He disappeared inside.
I looked toward the patch where the shed had stood.
Rain from the night before had darkened the soil.
One tomato seedling sat beside the empty garden box in a black plastic nursery pot.
I crouched carefully with Marin against me.
Pressed one finger into the soil.
Soft.
Loose.
Nothing locked.
Nothing hidden.
Auberon came back with the bottle.
He did not take Marin from me.
He waited until I held out my hand.
Then passed it over.
I fed our daughter in the morning sun while he began filling the first garden box.
No one told me when to eat.
No one told me when to speak.
No one decided which door I was allowed to open.
The old shed was gone.
May you like
The backyard was simply a backyard again.
The End
