Chapter 13: After
The sentencing happened on a Wednesday.
Marlowe did not attend.
Sable called her at eleven-forty.
"Suspended sentence," she said.
"Eighteen months, fully suspended.
Financial penalties of two hundred and sixty thousand dollars.
Three years' probation.
His law firm — he'd been a silent partner in a property investment firm — has already asked him to step down."
"All right," Marlowe said.
"Marlowe.
It's done."
"I know," she said.
"Thank you, Sable.
For all of it."
After she hung up, she stood in her kitchen for a while without doing anything in particular.
Then she opened the back door and stepped outside.
It was a mild morning.
The garden was overgrown — she hadn't touched it in months, and it showed.
The roses along the back fence had gone leggy and wild.
The small herb bed near the wall was mostly weeds now.
A bird was doing something purposeful in the apple tree at the far end.
She stood on the step and looked at all of it.
She had a lot of work to do out here.
She found that she didn't mind.
---
She flew to Edinburgh ten days later.
Her sister met her at the airport — not at arrivals, but outside, leaning against the car in the gray Scottish morning with her coat collar up and her arms already open.
Marlowe walked into them and stayed there for a long moment.
"All right?" her sister said.
"Getting there," Marlowe said.
They drove through the city as it was waking up, the streets wet from overnight rain, the light low and soft and nothing like home.
Her sister talked about ordinary things — her children, a neighbor's new dog, a restaurant that had opened near the flat.
Marlowe listened and watched the city go past and felt, for the first time in a very long time, that she was not required to be ready for anything.
She stayed for ten days.
She slept well for the first time in months.
She ate meals that someone else cooked.
She walked along the Water of Leith in the mornings, alone, with her hands in her pockets and no particular destination.
On the last evening, she and her sister sat in the kitchen after dinner with a bottle of wine between them, and her sister said, "What will you do now?
Actually do."
Marlowe thought about it.
"I'm going to fix the garden," she said.
"And then I don't know.
Something I choose."
Her sister smiled.
"That sounds right."
---
She came home on a Sunday.
The house was quiet and exactly as she had left it.
She put her bag down in the hallway and walked through to the kitchen and put the kettle on.
While it boiled, she looked out at the garden.
The roses were still wild.
The herb bed was still weeds.
The apple tree was doing whatever it had been doing before she left.
She made tea.
One cup.
Set the second one back in the cabinet without thinking about it.
She sat down at the kitchen table, both hands around the warm cup, and looked at the garden through the glass.
She had a lot of work to do.
She was ready to begin.
---
*Some people spend years doing everything right, and still have it taken from them — until the day they decide to stop waiting for permission to take it back.*
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