“You okay?” he asked.
“I keep seeing them,” I said. “The trash bags. Every time I pull into the driveway, I see them.”
He came down the steps and stood beside me.
“Me too,” he said quietly. “Every morning when I get the mail.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever stop seeing them.”
“Then I don’t think I should stop seeing them either,” he said. “I think I should remember. Every day. What I did.”
We stood there together in the dark for a long time.
It was the first time I let him hold my hand again.
Evelyn turned one on a Saturday in October.
We had the party in our backyard, under the maple trees, which were just starting to turn red and orange again. Exactly a year since I’d driven up this street in my dad’s Buick and found my life in garbage bags on the lawn.Both grandmothers were there, still arguing. This time it was about whether Evelyn’s first word had been “dada” or “duck.” My dad manned the grill and burned every single hot dog and insisted it was on purpose. Rachel from work came, and Ben’s cousin with his kids, and old Mrs. Patterson from next door, who brought a lemon cake and hugged me for a long time at the gate without saying anything.
