The Burning Road to Divorce After the Fire novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Hold Your Course

Lainey's POV

We climbed the west slope in the gray before sunrise, with the seed tin in my arms.

Kurt carried the thermoses and walked two steps behind me.

He did not talk, and I loved him for it.

The sunflowers came up out of the dark as we reached them, hundreds of tall green stalks with their heads still bowed.

They had survived because the fire jumped the creek and went around them.

Pearl would have said that was luck.

She would have said it with her mouth pressed flat, because she did not believe in luck.

I stopped in the middle of the field and stood with the tin against my chest.

"I don't know how to do this," I said.

"You don't have to do it right," Kurt said from behind me.

"She'd tell me to stop fussing."

"She'd be right."

I laughed, and my breath shook.

I knelt in the dirt and set the tin on the ground.

I worked the lid off with my thumbnails.

The ashes were gray and soft, finer than I had expected.

I had held her hand for the last time on that road.

I had thought it would be the worst thing I ever touched.

This was worse, and it was also not.

"Gran," I said.

The wind moved the heads of the sunflowers.

"I'm sorry I wasn't louder. I'm sorry I let him say dramatic to me for four years, and I believed it. You told me. You said happy isn't a reason to keep quiet."

"I'm going to take his name off everything. I'm going to keep yours."

"The helicopter is going to fly again. It's going to fly the way you wanted."

I breathed in.

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