In the parking lot, she hugged me awkwardly, careful of my knee.

I hugged her back, not because the past had been erased, but because there was a small, honest part of the present I wanted to keep.

At the farmhouse, Buster met me at the door and demanded his evening walk.

I put the kettle on first, then carried Walter’s notebook to the porch.

The young hickory stood beyond the fence, its bare branches slender against the sky.

Its roots were still settling into the earth.