It had a yard.
Not large.
But a yard.
I went inside.
I stood in the kitchen.
I made coffee.
I sat at the table with the coffee.
The hearing had been real.
The settlement was real.
The sixty-one thousand dollars was real.
The ring would be returned to me by the end of the week, which was what the agreement specified.
The rest of it, the charges, the proceedings, whatever happened next to Thomas and his mother, that was happening without me.
That was its own story.
Mine was this.
The kitchen.
The coffee.
The yard outside the window where I was going to plant something that took a few years to grow.
So I had something to watch.
I thought about who I was nine years ago.
Standing in a church in her wedding dress.
Believing in the house with the big yard.
Believing in the version of Thomas who was charming enough that the seams did not show.
