Chapter 9: What Comes After the Remainder
Six weeks later, I signed a lease on a two-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a building with a maple tree outside the living room window.
Lily chose her room first.
She stood in the doorway and looked at the empty space for a long moment, then walked in and stood in the center of it and turned around slowly, like she was measuring something.
"Can I paint it?" she asked.
"What color?"
She thought about it seriously.
"Green.
But a good green.
Not a weird green."
"We'll find a good green."
She nodded, satisfied, and went to stand at her window.
Below, the maple tree was just starting to turn.
My mother helped me carry boxes up the stairs, which she insisted on despite my protests and her own knee, and she made sandwiches on the kitchen counter before there was even a table to eat them at, and we sat on the floor with our backs against the wall and ate and didn't talk much, which was its own kind of conversation.
"It's a good apartment," she said.
"It is."
"Good light."
"Yes."
She handed me the second half of her sandwich.
"Kayla called me."
I didn't say anything.
"I didn't answer," she said.
"I'm telling you because I think you should know she's trying, not because I think you have to do anything about it."
"Okay."
"That's all I'll say about it."
"Okay, Mom."
She patted my knee once and stood up and went back to the boxes.
The preliminary hearing had happened two weeks earlier.
Brandon had sat at the defendant's table in a gray suit and looked at the table in front of him and not at me, which I was grateful for.
His attorney had filed three motions.
All three were denied.
Marcus Teller had testified about the planning, the phone calls, the money that had changed hands.
The insurance policy — four hundred thousand dollars, my name on the original, Brandon's name added six months ago — had been flagged and frozen by the insurance company pending the criminal investigation.
Brandon's attorney had tried, in the hallway afterward, to suggest a conversation.
I had looked at him and kept walking.
The trial date was set for the spring.
I was not afraid of the spring.
I unpacked the kitchen first, the way my mother had always said to — get the kitchen working and the rest follows.
Lily helped me line the shelves with paper and arrange the plates, and she had opinions about where everything should go, strong opinions, which I mostly agreed with because she was right.
At some point in the late afternoon, she stopped unpacking and came and stood next to me at the kitchen window.
We looked out at the maple tree together.
"Mom," she said.
"Yeah."
"Are we going to be okay?"
I looked at the tree.
The leaves were red and orange at the edges, still green in the middle.
Still turning.
"Yes," I said.
"How do you know?"
I thought about it honestly, the way she deserved.
"Because we're here," I said.
"We got here.
That's how I know."
She leaned against my arm.
I put my hand on top of her head.
Outside, the maple tree moved in the wind.
The afternoon light came through the window at an angle that would be good in the mornings, I thought.
Good for coffee.
Good for sitting.
Lily straightened up after a moment and went back to her boxes, pulling out her books and lining them up on the floor in some order only she understood.
I stayed at the window a little longer.
I had a follow-up with the pulmonologist next week.
I had a victim's advocate from the DA's office who called every Thursday.
I had a new therapist I'd seen twice and thought I might actually keep seeing.
I had my mother's number in my phone and a kitchen that was already starting to look like mine.
I had a daughter who asked hard questions and waited for real answers.
I poured two glasses of water — one for me, one for Lily — and carried them to the living room and set hers down next to her books.
She looked up.
"Thanks, Mom."
"You're welcome."
I sat down on the floor beside her, my back against the wall, the afternoon light moving across the bare floor between us.
She handed me a book without looking up.
"Can you read this one?
I've already read it but I want to hear it."
I looked at the cover.
A story about a girl and a horse and a long journey home.
"Sure," I said.
I opened to the first page and started to read, and Lily leaned against my shoulder, and outside the maple tree turned slowly in the wind, and the apartment filled up quietly, the way good places do, with the small sounds of people beginning again.
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Some betrayals go deeper than we ever imagined — and some people find their way back to themselves in the most unexpected ways.
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