I leaned forward until my forehead touched hers.
A year earlier, I had found her barefoot behind a beautiful house she wasn’t allowed to live in, hiding beneath a scarf because the people around her had convinced her she should be ashamed of surviving.
Now she was sitting beside me with short curls beginning to grow across her head.
We never returned to the old property.
Instead, we bought a modest house fifteen minutes from the hospital.
Nothing extravagant.
Two bedrooms.
A small kitchen.
A wooden porch.
And a garden Naomi insisted on planting herself.
The first spring, she planted sunflowers along the fence.
One Saturday morning, I watched her kneeling in the dirt.
For half a second, the sight transported me back to the afternoon I came home.
The shed.
The bucket.
The fear in her eyes.
Then Naomi looked over her shoulder.
She was smiling.
“Are you planning to help me or just stand there looking handsome?”
