Now I Watch Her Love Him novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Parking Lot

Dylan's POV

The drawing hung in my kitchen, and it was a small brown wren on a branch of bare maple.

She had inked it in six lines and washed it with one gray, and under the branch, in her hand, it said: Wren. Due March 30.

On the back she had written the date of the garden's opening, in September.

I had looked at it every morning for seven months while the coffee brewed.

I had been in the house that whole time.

I walked past the nursery door in the morning and at night, and for the first three months I did not open it.

In June I opened it.

It was empty, and the walls were pale yellow, and a piece of tape still marked where her drawing table had stood.

I sat down on the floor and said my daughter's name out loud, to nobody, until my voice quit.

After that I could go in.

That was all.

It was not a cure, and I did not expect one.

On the second Saturday of September I drove to St. Elizabeth's and parked at the far end of the lot.

I had not been invited, and I had not been told to stay away.

I turned the engine off and sat with the window down.

The hospital's old garden had been redone.

There was a gravel circle now, with six benches around it, and a low wall with brass plates, and a young maple planted in the center that Jonas had put in himself.

Wren's bench stood first, nearest the path.

Behind the benches a plain white tent held folding chairs.

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