So the first thing I did, in the first hour of my life without him, was give my mother back the thing his death made possible: the ordinary, unremarkable, immeasurable privilege of standing next to me in public, in the light, as my mother, where everyone could see.

She wept, and I felt her shoulder trembling against mine, and I knew the tears were not only grief.

Some of them were twenty-four years of a woman finally, finally allowed to stand where she belonged.

Chapter 19 — The Apple Blossom

I knelt beside the open grave and laid a single red apple blossom onto the wood.

“Thank you, Dad,” I whispered.