Chapter 22: The Cedar

It was June before I was ready.

Ronan had taken me to dinner every Tuesday since the first one.

Every time he arrived at the cabin early, with a new card of questions.

He had stopped asking for permission to hold my hand.

He just held it, and waited to see whether I'd pull away, and I hadn't.

On the first warm Saturday of the month, I carried a sapling down to the lake.

It was a young cedar in a plastic pot, no taller than my hip.

I had bought it at the nursery in town with my own money.

Ronan came down the path behind me with a shovel over his shoulder.

He had not asked me where to put it.

I chose the spot, a bare rise of ground above the water, where the morning sun came over the ridge first.

"Here," I said.

He drove the shovel in.

He dug the hole wider than it needed to be and deeper, and he did not talk.

When it was done, he stepped back and held the shovel in both hands.

I knelt in the dirt and worked the roots loose.

My hands shook a little, and I took a breath.

"I never knew if it was a boy or a girl," I said.

"I know."

"Hazel couldn't tell yet. I used to talk to the pup at night in the bathroom, so you wouldn't hear."

"What did you say?"

"I called it Little One."

I set the tree in the hole and pressed the soil down around it.

"I bought a yellow hat. I was going to give it to you at that dinner."

"Ivy."

"I'm all right. I want to say it out loud."

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