Chapter 22: The Garden

The house was dark when we got home, except for the porch light.

I had left it on that morning out of habit.

Audrey stopped on the step and looked up at it.

"You always leave it on," she said.

"I know."

"The night of our anniversary, I came home at two and it was the only light on the street."

"Habit," I said.

"I sat in the driveway for ten minutes, looking at it." Her voice shook. "I couldn't make myself come in."

I stared at her.

"Come on," she said.

She did not take me inside.

She took me around the side of the house, through the gate, into the back garden.

It was cold, and the beds were mulched for winter.

The kitchen window threw a long yellow square on the grass.

Audrey sat down on the bench and pulled me down beside her, and she wrapped the old plaid blanket over both of us.

"Why did you put the bench here?" I asked.

"Look where it faces."

I looked.

The bench faced the kitchen window, and the sink, and the spot where I stood every morning to make her coffee.

"I designed it the first spring," she said. "I told myself it was for the light. It was so I could sit out here, where I could see you."

"You never sat here."

"Every night you were asleep, for a year, I sat here." She laughed, thin and wet. "You were the best thing I ever planted, and I never told you."

My throat closed.

"There's no clock tonight," Audrey said. "No room. No sheriff. No one to prove anything to."

"Audrey, you don't..."

"Shut up, Ethan. I'm busy."

She turned on the bench to face me.

She took my face in her bandaged hands, and the gauze smelled like the hospital.

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