Epilogue: The Seasons
His mother called on Saturday morning.
“The leaves have finished now,” she said. “They’ve mostly gone.”
“I saw them,” he said.
“Did you?”
“Yesterday. In the park, actually. I took Nora there. She wanted to walk. The babies sleep in the pram.”
A pause.
“And?” his mother said.
He looked out the window. The park was visible from where he stood — the bare trees, the path, the bench on the southern path where the October sun still reached in the afternoon.
“We talked,” he said. “We’re talking. It’s—” He stopped. “It’s not simple.”
“It was never going to be simple,” she said.
“No.”
“Is it good?”
He thought about the walk yesterday — the pram, the bare trees, the conversation that had gone somewhere neither of them had planned. The way Nora had laughed at something he said, briefly and without performing it, the laugh he remembered that had always sounded like she meant it.
“Yes,” he said. “I think it is.”
“Good,” said Margaret. “Then pay attention to it.”
He looked at the park.
The seasons were still happening, without him having to do anything. The trees had lost their leaves and would grow new ones in the spring, patient and indifferent, keeping the time he had been too busy to keep.
He had time now.
He intended to use it.
