I could hear a neighbor starting a car and somebody’s dog complaining behind a fence.

The house behind us was quiet.

There were rooms we still approached carefully and a basket of yellow wool beside Clara’s chair.

Neither a prison sentence nor a signed settlement had emptied them of what we remembered.

But no one was coming to our kitchen with page forty open and a demand that she hold a pen.

We would answer future letters through counsel when necessary.

We would attend the appointments still on the calendar.

Clara would decide what she wanted to keep and what she was ready to put away.

I set the shovel against the fence and returned to the patio.

She moved beside me, close enough that our sleeves touched.

Beyond us, the small oak stood in the fresh earth.

“The roots will hold the soil firm here,” I said.