Chapter 48: Forty-Two

On the first anniversary of my wedding, every rose in my grandmother's garden was in bloom.

I sat in the middle of them with my daughter asleep on my chest.

I had seen February.

She had been born on the ninth, in a snowstorm, at four in the morning, three weeks early.

The plow had stuck in a drift at the bottom of the dirt road.

The old man who had sold me the farmhouse pulled it free with his tractor, in his pajamas.

The ambulance had waited behind him the whole time.

He still told that story at every meal.

Today he told it again, to the older detective, who had driven four hours with a pie.

"Pulled the whole truck out on a chain," he said. "Never spilled my coffee."

"You did not have coffee," Patricia said.

"I had the thermos."

Patricia sat beside me on the garden bench in a blue hat, with a knitting bag open at her feet.

Madison sat across the grass with her son, who was walking now, in short unsteady runs, toward the nearest bush.

The trainer ran after him.

"Not the thorns, baby," Madison called. "Ask Mommy first."

"He listens to nobody," Patricia said happily, and went on knitting.

Folding chairs stood on the grass again, because Nathaniel had insisted, and most of them were empty, which was fine.

He came up the path from the gate with a flat cardboard package under his arm and a letter in his hand.

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