Helen conceded that she could not recall every conversation.
She remained certain about her decision to protect the trunk.
The review established no final conclusion that afternoon.
It did narrow the questions investigators needed to resolve.
When I left the building, Mara thanked me for telling the story of the boxes without making it a story about my marriage.
I told her I was beginning to understand why that mattered.
CHAPTER 37: A Weekend Without News
The following weekend passed without a call from Naomi, Caroline, or Jessica.
For the first time in months, I had two days in which nobody expected me to examine a document or answer a question about Richard.
Aaron invited me on a hiking trip along a narrow river trail north of town.
We packed sandwiches and drove out before sunrise.
The path wound through maple trees and crossed a wooden bridge above shallow water.
Aaron talked about his plans to expand the workshop and hire an apprentice.
I listened without turning the conversation toward my divorce.
At a bend in the trail, he asked whether I had thought about taking a vacation.
I said the idea sounded wonderful and impossible at the same time.
He laughed because I had always treated leisure as a task requiring advance approval.
We stopped beside the river and ate sandwiches on a flat rock.
A pair of herons moved through the reeds upstream.
I found myself describing the small cabin I had wanted to rent with Jessica years earlier.
Aaron said there was no reason I could not go alone or with a friend.
The suggestion felt strangely radical.
I had spent years imagining future plans in the plural.
Even when I wanted something for myself, I had measured whether it would fit our shared calendar.
Now the calendar belonged to me.
That freedom did not erase the grief, but it gave the grief somewhere to move.
We returned home with muddy boots and sore legs.
That evening I cooked dinner and ate it at the kitchen table without checking my phone every few minutes.
I slept seven uninterrupted hours for the first time since the Thursday when I opened the bedroom door.
In the morning I wrote a list of things I wanted to do that had nothing to do with Richard, Jessica, or Alder House.
I wrote down a river trip, a photography class, and a new bookshelf for the living room.
The list was ordinary enough to make me smile.
