The garden beds were cleared and replanted with fresh perennials.

The kitchen filled again with the smell of roasted chicken and fresh bread and hot tea.

Neighbors began stopping by on weekends, bringing fruit pies, resuming porch conversations that had been interrupted by her illness and everything that came after.

My parents never returned to the driveway.

They moved out of town six months later, unable, I think, to face the quiet judgment of a community that knew exactly what they had tried to do.

I do not know what their life became.