Epilogue: Tuesday Morning
She was eight by the time the world had settled into its new shape. Eight and three months, precise about the fraction, which was a thing she had become precise about in the way children became precise about the things that mattered to them.
She had flowers growing in the garden. Sunflowers, which had done well, and lavender, which had done moderately, and something she called the purple ones that the garden center had identified as alliums and that had bloomed spectacularly in May in a way that Emma treated as a personal achievement.
Geoffrey visited on alternating weekends, which was a logistical arrangement that Sarah described as unprecedented in cat transportation and that Geoffrey himself seemed to regard with dignified acceptance.
Dr. Kwan had, at the last session, suggested they move to monthly rather than fortnightly appointments. This was, she said, a good sign. Emma had received this news with characteristic seriousness and then asked if she could still come in to use the sand tray, which Dr. Kwan said was absolutely fine.
On a Tuesday morning in October, Daniel was in the kitchen making breakfast when Emma came down the stairs. Running. She had been running down the stairs for months now but he still noticed it, and he thought he probably always would, would always register the running as a thing that meant something, the way certain things stayed meaningful.
She came into the kitchen and sat at the table.
“Alliums?” she said, looking out the window at the garden beds, which were past their glory but still had structure.
“Past it for this year,” he said. “We can plant more in the autumn.”
She considered this. “Can we try red ones?”
“We can try.”
She nodded, as if confirming a business arrangement, and accepted the toast he set in front of her.
Outside, the October morning was doing what October mornings did — bright and slightly thin, the light at a low angle, the garden catching it sideways. A bird landed on the table, investigated, left.
Emma ate her toast.
He sat across from her with his tea.
Ordinary. The most ordinary morning in the world.
He looked at his daughter’s face in the morning light, and he thought about Millbrook Lane, and about the long drive home, and about the scene he had played in his head four hundred miles of road — the gate, the running, the catching.
He had not imagined it like this, exactly.
He had imagined it simpler, brighter, without the weight of what had come before.
But he had also imagined it true, and it was true, and she was here, running down stairs and growing flowers and making decisions about allium colors with the full authority of someone who had decided that this was her garden and she intended to use it.
That was enough.
That was, in fact, everything.
