Chapter 24: Page Nine

I woke at dawn on a Tuesday in the farmhouse, eleven months after the party, and lay still to see if I was alive.

I was.

The quilt was warm, the window was gray with early light, and there was a man's arm across my waist.

My heart was going at an ordinary pace.

I had circled this date in my head for a year.

I lay there and counted the things in the room that were mine.

The quilt, the iron bed, the cedar chest, the rose that Nathaniel had left in a jam jar on the sill.

I got up without waking him and went downstairs in his sweater.

The kitchen had a new stove, because the old one had finally died in March, and the new one lit on the first try.

I made coffee.

I sat at the table my grandmother had eaten at, with the sealed envelope in front of me.

It had been sitting on that table since the glass wall.

Thanksgiving had come and gone, and so had Christmas.

Patricia had brought a store-bought pie and eaten two slices with her eyes closed.

Madison had sent a photo of a baby with dark hair and a trainer's chin.

Trevor wrote me one letter from prison, which I read once and burned in the grate.

I had left the envelope shut every single day.

Nathaniel had never asked about it.

I had known why I was waiting.

I was waiting for this morning.

I slit it with a butter knife.

There were twelve pages inside, stapled at the corner, on heavy cream paper.

I sipped the coffee.

It was black, no sugar, made by me, the way he had made it for me.

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