Chapter 23: The Cedar Tree

The cedar stood at the far end of the lawn, where it had stood on their wedding day.

Henrietta sat beneath it in a wheelchair with a rug over her knees and her pearls on.

She had been home from the hospital for nine days.

She had already fired a nurse.

"You're late," she said, as Lydia and Hayden came across the grass.

"We're ten minutes early."

"Then I was early. Come here, both of you."

Lydia wore the green silk again.

Hayden had his jacket over his arm, and he did not seem to know what to do with his hands.

"Lydia," Henrietta said. "Look down."

At the roots of the cedar, in the shade, there was a small stone.

Lydia had walked past that tree a hundred times.

She had never seen the stone.

It was gray and rounded, the size of a loaf of bread, and it had been sunk into the earth so that it sat level with the grass.

There was one word cut into it.

*Ours.*

Lydia's knees gave.

She sat down on the grass in her silk dress.

"When did you put this here?" she whispered.

Hayden crouched beside her.

"The week after you left."

"You never told me."

"I didn't know where to send the news."

She put her hand flat on the stone.

It was warm from the sun.

"I came here every Sunday," he said. "I talked to it. I told it things I couldn't tell anyone in the house."

"What things?"

"That I was sorry I wasn't in the room."

Lydia's breath caught.

The loss had come in the night, at the hospital on Maple Street, in her fifth month.

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