The Choices We Made novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Third of March
On the morning of the third of March, Eliza stood under the apple tree in the Schermerhorn Hall garden, and for the first time she was not alone.
The branches were bare. A thin sun came through them onto the grass.
Albie ran in circles around the trunk in his dinosaur pajamas, with a paper crown over his ears.
"Is it time?" he shouted. "Is it time yet?"
"Ask your father," Eliza said.
Weston came across the lawn with a cake in both hands.
It leaned a little to the left. One side was darker than the other, and there was a smear of frosting on his sleeve.
"I followed the recipe," he said.
"You followed half of it."
"I followed the half I could read."
"That's two cakes," Albie announced, and pointed at the one in his father's hands. "That's the real-day cake. Mommy's is the March seventeenth cake. I get both."
"You get both," Eliza said.
She had baked hers the night before. It sat on the picnic table under a glass dome, perfect and plain.
Weston set his down beside it and stepped back.
For a moment the three of them stood there, looking at the two cakes.
"The judge ruled yesterday," Weston said, quietly, so Albie wouldn't hear. "Eight months suspended. Six hundred hours of service."
"You told me last night."
"I wanted to tell you again in the garden."
"Why?"
"Because I'm still here," he said. "I thought you should see it."
She took his hand.
It was cold, and the knuckles were rough, and she held it for no reason.
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