It Was Never a Gift

A grandchild, surely.

Their first grandchild, surely, would reach it.

The email ended that hope, cleanly and forever, and she was surprised to find that its ending did not devastate her so much as free her.

You cannot keep knocking on a door that was bricked up before you were born.

She had spent twenty-nine years knocking.

Now she knew, with documentary certainty, that there had never been a room on the other side — only the wall, and her own knuckles, and the sound of her own hoping.