I watched him go and felt the smallest opening of space where years of fear had been.

PART 18

We moved in February.

The new apartment was closer to the library than the old house, and the lake was a ten-minute walk away.

It had two bedrooms, a kitchen with slightly crooked cabinet doors, and a living-room window wide enough for six potted plants.

Grace insisted on naming each one after a planet.

“Jupiter is the biggest,” she said, setting a sturdy green fern on the sill.

“Mercury can be the tiny cactus.”