The first thing I did in my new house was sit still long enough for the light to move.
I had carried in the suitcase.
Locked the front door.
Put my handbag on a chair.
There were tasks waiting, but nobody had decided when I should begin them.
I rested my hands on the kitchen table and watched the bright edge of sunlight creep toward my wrist.
For a little while, I could not stop listening.
I expected a call from upstairs.
A question about lunch.
The sound of Jessica opening a cupboard and discovering that something had not been put where she wanted it.
Instead, the house offered small noises of its own.
A branch brushing the window.
The refrigerator settling into silence.
A dog barking somewhere down the street.
I had wanted quiet.
Now that I had it, I did not quite know how to behave inside it.
My phone lay beside the photograph.
I checked it once.
No message.
I turned it over.
Then I looked at the kettle and stood.
Tea was something I knew how to make even when I did not know what came next.
I chose a cup without worrying whether anyone else had claimed it.
Filled the kettle.
Opened the cupboard where I had put the tea.
Such ordinary movements.
They steadied me.
When the water boiled, I poured carefully and carried the cup back to the table.
I did not drink it standing at the counter.
That afternoon, Helen knocked.
I knew her knock.
Two quick taps and a third after a pause, as though the door might have missed the first two.
I opened it, and she looked past me at the suitcase.
Then she looked at my face.
“Well,” she said.
“Well.”
She put her bag down and held out her arms.
I went into them.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
I had spent the morning explaining myself without raising my voice.
In my sister’s doorway embrace, I finally allowed myself to stop explaining.
She smelled of soap and the cool air outside.
When we stepped apart, she brushed a loose strand of hair from my cheek.
“Tea?”
“Already made.”
“Then you’re settling in.”
I laughed.
It came out shakily.
Helen noticed but did not comment.
We sat in the kitchen.
I told her about the envelope.
About Colin recognizing the initials.
About showing them the ticket.
She listened with both hands around her cup.
When I described Jessica saying I would ruin the family, Helen looked toward the window.
“You don’t have to answer every accusation.”
“I know.”
She gave me a familiar sideways glance.
I smiled despite myself.
“I’m learning.”
Helen had known about the house by then.
She had helped me imagine where things might go without crowding the decisions.
She knew about the money too.
I had told her once the arrangements were secure and the secrecy had become less about protection than habit.
Her first response had been to ask whether I had someone sensible helping me.
Her second had been to laugh until she had to wipe her eyes.
Not because she thought the ticket was funny.
Because she could not get past the fact that Jessica had handed me my way out while making fun of me.
But that afternoon, Helen did not laugh about any of it.
She asked whether I had eaten.
I said I had meant to.
She opened her bag and brought out a container.
“I thought so.”
We ate at the table.
Afterward, she helped me unwrap Arthur’s photograph.
“Where do you want him?”
I looked around.
For months, I had thought about rooms as possibilities.
Now I could choose.
“In the sunroom, eventually. For tonight, here.”
Helen placed the frame on a shelf near the kitchen.
Arthur’s face caught a little of the afternoon light.
I reached up and adjusted it by half an inch.
“There.”
My sister waited while I looked.
Then she asked whether I wanted her to stay.
“No. I think I need to do the first night on my own.”
She nodded.
That was one of the things I loved about Helen.
A question from her remained a question after I answered it.
Before she left, we stood on the porch.
The street was quiet.
A man walked past with a little dog pulling toward every patch of grass.
Helen raised a hand.
He waved back.
“I’m close,” she said.
“I know.”
“Call if you want me.”
“I will.”
She did not say I should not be alone.
She did not tell me I would feel better surrounded by people.
She let the house be mine.
That evening, I unpacked my clothes.
The bedroom cupboard looked larger than it needed to.
I hung dresses with space between them.
Set my shoes on the shelf.
Put the cardigan on the back of a chair.
I found myself arranging things as though somebody might soon need the room for another purpose.
Then I stopped.
I moved the chair where I preferred it.
I opened the curtains fully.
At bedtime, I checked the front door.
Went to the kitchen.
Came back.
There was no reason for all the walking except that I had never slept in this house before.
At Colin’s, I had known every late noise.
Here, a creak from the porch made me pause.
I listened.
The wind moved through the trees.
Nothing else.
In bed, I lay awake thinking about the children.
Would Lucas understand that I had not left because he wanted a bedroom?
Would Chloe wonder why I had gone without the usual goodbye before school?
I had been careful not to put them in the morning’s confrontation.
That did not mean they would remain untouched by it.
Their lives were changing.
I could not control every explanation their parents gave them.
I could make sure that, when I spoke to them, they heard my love without an argument attached.
That night, I did not call.
I knew the house I had left would still be full of questions.
I gave them the evening.
I also gave it to myself.
The next morning, I woke before dawn.
For years, the early hour had belonged to lunchboxes and the coffee maker starting upstairs.
My body rose into that schedule before my mind remembered.
I sat up.
Then I looked at the unfamiliar curtains and lay back down.
There was no child who would miss breakfast because I waited ten minutes.
No adult leaving a message about something that should already be done.
I listened to the quiet.
At first, it felt like neglect.
Then it began to feel like rest.
When I finally got up, I made toast and ate it while it was warm.
I read several pages of a book.
Went back and read one of them again because I had not been interrupted enough to lose my place.
I had forgotten what concentration felt like.
Later, I walked through the house with a notebook.
There were practical things to organize.
A place for spare blankets.
A hook for the front-door key.
The desk in the sunroom.
I wrote them down.
I did not turn the list into an emergency.
By noon, only two items had been done.
I made lunch anyway.
The quiet remained strange for the first several days.
Sometimes I turned on the radio for company.
Sometimes I turned it off because I wanted to hear the birds outside.
I discovered that I liked eating earlier than Jessica did.
I liked leaving a book open on the table.
I liked the lamp beside my chair, though its shade was old and did not match anything else.
I had spent so long adjusting to the preferences of a household that recognizing my own felt almost indulgent.
There were harder moments.
I reached for the phone when I saw something Lucas would have liked.
Then stopped because I was afraid a call would sound as though I regretted leaving.
I wondered whether Colin was angry again.
Whether Jessica was telling him I had planned all of this to embarrass them.
Whether the children were being taught to think of the move as something Grandma had done to them.
Those thoughts came most often after dark.
In daylight, the garden needed looking at and the kettle needed filling.
At night, doubt found more space.
I spoke to Helen about it.
She listened from the rocking chair beside mine.
By then, we had put the chairs on the porch.
“Leaving was necessary,” I said. “That doesn’t make it feel simple.”
“No.”
“I keep wondering whether I should have done something differently.”
“Probably. Most people could have done something differently.”
I turned toward her.
“That’s reassuring.”
She smiled.
“I’m your sister. I’m not here to tell you you’ve handled seventy-three years without a mistake.”
I laughed.
Then she grew quieter.
“You can regret waiting so long. You can regret not speaking sooner. You don’t have to use those regrets to move back.”
I looked out at the street.
A child was riding a bicycle with a parent walking behind.
“I don’t want to move back.”
“I know.”
“I’m afraid wanting this much quiet says something unkind about me.”
Helen broke a blueberry muffin in half and handed me a piece.
“It says you were tired.”
We ate without speaking.
The muffin was still faintly warm.
I looked at the crumbs on my palm and realized I did not feel obliged to get up immediately for a plate.
Helen would not think less of me.
Neither would I.
Across town, Colin and Jessica were dealing with the part of household life that had always reached me first.
I did not witness it.
I knew only what Colin later told me and what became apparent as the weeks passed.
Meals had to be arranged.
Laundry did not arrive clean in drawers.
The children needed rides at times that did not fit neatly around work.
The house had to be packed.
A new home had to be found in the same school district.
None of these things was extraordinary.
That was what made their absence matter.
My work had not been a dramatic rescue anyone could point to.
It had been the daily prevention of small problems.
When I left, the problems stopped being prevented.
Jessica had to take time away from her law firm.
Colin had to rearrange his own hours.
They ordered meals.
Looked for missing clothes.
Checked calendars that I had once remembered for them.
There was no pleasure for me in imagining the children waiting while the adults sorted it out.
But I refused to turn their discomfort into my assignment again.
I had protected the educational trusts.
I could welcome visits.
I could answer a question when I wanted to.
I could not give them independence while continuing to perform all the labor that made it unnecessary.
During those first weeks, Richard kept me informed about the property.
His messages were clear and practical.
I asked what I needed to know.
Answered what I needed to answer.
Then I put the papers away.
I did not call him for reports on Colin’s mood.
The house was an asset being sold.
My son was a person with whom I hoped to rebuild a relationship.
Keeping those things separate took practice.
When worry drew me toward the property paperwork, I made tea instead.
Sometimes that worked.
Sometimes I opened the folder anyway.
But I stopped looking for reassurance in documents that could not give it.
Colin called occasionally.
At first, the conversations were awkward.
He asked whether the house was all right.
Whether I needed anything.
Whether the heating worked.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. It does.”
Then there would be silence.
He was accustomed to calls having a purpose.
A favor.
An errand.
An answer he needed before he could do the next thing.
I was accustomed to supplying one.
We were learning to speak without that arrangement between us.
Once, he asked what I had done that day.
I told him I had read and gone for a walk.
“That’s nice.”
“Yes.”
He waited.
I did too.
Then he asked what I was reading.
It was such an ordinary question that it almost made me cry.
I told him.
He had not heard of the book.
I explained a little about it.
For several minutes, we talked about something that belonged to me.
Afterward, I sat with the phone in my lap.
I was careful not to make too much of one conversation.
But I let myself enjoy it.
The children spoke to me too.
Their voices arrived with questions about the yellow house.
Did it have a yard?
Could they stay there?
Was there a room for them?
I said yes, when we arranged a visit.
I did not say they could come whenever they liked.
Their parents needed to be part of their plans.
And I needed to know when company was coming.
A boundary could be ordinary.
It did not need to be announced like a punishment.
Lucas asked whether I was mad at him.
I closed my eyes.
“No, darling.”
“Because Dad said I was getting your room.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“But you moved.”
“I moved because I wanted my own house.”
That was a truth he could carry.
He did not need the whole argument.
He needed to know he was loved and that grown people made decisions for reasons larger than a child’s wish for privacy.
Chloe asked whether I still had Arthur’s photograph.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Near the kitchen for now.”
“Can I see it when I come?”
“Of course.”
After we ended the call, I stood in front of the photograph.
I touched the frame.
The children had not forgotten him.
Neither had I.
About three weeks after I left, Colin called on a Tuesday evening.
I was washing one cup at the sink.
When I saw his name, I dried my hands before answering.
“Hello.”
“Mom?”
His voice sounded worn.
Not hurried.
Not distracted.
Worn.
“Do you have a minute?”
“Yes.”
There was a pause.
I sat down.
“We signed a lease today.”
“Oh?”
“A townhouse. It’s smaller, but it’s near the school.”
“That sounds sensible.”
“We start moving this weekend.”
I pictured boxes lining the hallway I had walked through so many times.
I said nothing about them.
He could pack.
He could arrange a truck.
He could do the things adults did when moving.
“How are the children feeling about it?”
“Lucas is already deciding where his desk will go. Chloe’s worried about whether her things will fit.”
“They will find their places.”
“Yeah.”
He breathed into the phone.
Then went quiet again.
I waited.
“Jess and I had a fight last night.”
I looked toward the dark window.
“I’m sorry.”
“She was upset about dinner. About how much we’re spending on takeout. About never having time to do everything.”
I held the phone loosely.
There had been evenings when those complaints would have sent me directly to the kitchen.
Now I listened.
“I said something I should have said a long time ago.”
“What?”
“That you managed those things every day.”
He stopped.
“I said you’d been cooking and washing and collecting the kids for years, and we’d somehow decided you were the problem.”
My eyes filled.
I watched a reflection of the lamp in the glass.
Colin’s voice cracked slightly.
“She didn’t have an answer.”
I did not ask whether Jessica had agreed.
Agreement under pressure was not the same as understanding.
Colin continued.
“I keep thinking about the towels.”
“The towels?”
“You told me you were carrying them when you heard us.”
“Yes.”
“I remember you always putting them away.”
I smiled sadly.
“They needed putting away.”
“That’s what I used to think.”
He breathed out.
“That things needed doing, and you were there, so somehow they were yours.”
I wiped beneath one eye with my finger.
“I could have said no more often.”
“You shouldn’t have had to make a fight out of being treated like a person.”
I sat very still.
I had wanted him to understand the injury.
Not merely the inconvenience it caused him afterward.
That sentence told me he was beginning to.
“I let it happen,” he said. “And I joined in.”
I thought of the birthday laugh.
The brochure.
The way he had asked me not to make things harder.
“Yes.”
He did not defend himself.
That mattered too.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“Thank you for saying it.”
“I’m sorry I’m only seeing it because you’re gone.”
I looked around my kitchen.
“I’m glad you’re seeing it at all.”
There was a long silence.
Then he asked whether he could visit.
“Just me and the kids, if that’s all right.”
I looked at the chairs around my table.
“Yes.”
“What day would work?”
He had asked.
A day that worked for me.
I answered after looking at my calendar.
The world was changing in small, believable pieces.
When I hung up, I made another cup of tea.
It was not a celebration.
There was too much still uncertain for that.
But I drank it without checking my phone.
The townhouse was smaller than the rental they had left.
Colin told me about the rooms as though he wanted me to picture them.
I listened.
I did not offer furniture before he asked.
I did not send money because the adjustment sounded difficult.
They had signed the lease.
They were arranging their home.
The children stayed near their school.
The move was inconvenient and tiring, as moves generally were.
It was not the destruction Jessica had predicted.
In time, the old house sold.
Richard sent the documents I needed.
I read them at Arthur’s desk, which now stood in the sunroom.
There was light over the wood, and beyond the window the garden was beginning to look less like a plan and more like a place.
I signed.
Returned what was required.
Closed the folder.
I did not drive past the old house afterward.
I knew the rooms.
I knew what had happened in them.
Knowing who occupied them next was not necessary to my peace.
A&M had done what I needed it to do.
The name still belonged to the arrangements I had made and to the trusts carrying something of Arthur forward.
The property no longer held my relationship with Colin inside its walls.
Winter passed.
I found a rhythm.
Helen came most afternoons when she felt like it, and sometimes called first to see whether I was home.
Some days we sat on the porch.
Some days it was too cool, and we sat in the kitchen with our cups close to our hands.
We spoke about practical things.
The garden.
Books.
People we knew.
Arthur.
Colin.
There were days when I wanted to discuss him and days when I wanted to let the subject rest.
Helen learned the difference.
She would ask once.
Then she would tell me something funny about a dog she had seen or complain that the muffins had stuck to the pan.
Ordinary conversation became one of the pleasures of my life.
Nobody needed a grand declaration from me.
Nobody needed me to justify being quiet.
One afternoon, she studied my face.
“What?”
“You look less worn out.”
“I sleep.”
“You always slept.”
“I was always preparing for the next morning.”
She nodded.
I looked toward the garden.
“I don’t wake up already behind.”
Helen reached for her tea.
“That’s a good way to put it.”
I had expected freedom to feel energetic.
More often, it felt like the absence of a hurry I had mistaken for purpose.
I could spend half an hour deciding where a chair looked best.
I could leave it where it was.
I could bake because I wanted the smell in my own kitchen.
I could choose not to bake.
The first cake I made in the yellow house was smaller than the ones I had baked for the family.
I frosted it without rushing.
A little ridge remained along one side.
I left it.
Helen took a piece and said it was good.
I did not ask whether it was too sweet.
Colin’s calls continued.
Some were brief.
Some lasted longer.
He did not always know what to say, and neither did I.
We had a great deal of practice at being mother and son inside a household where I supplied what was missing.
We had less practice being two adults who spoke because they wanted to know each other.
He asked about the garden.
About Helen.
About whether I had finished the book I had mentioned.
I asked about his work, but I did not let every answer become a reason I should fix something.
When he described a difficult week, I said it sounded difficult.
I did not immediately volunteer to collect the children.
Sometimes I heard him pause where a request might once have followed.
Then he continued talking.
That pause became part of our repair.
I could not know whether every change would last.
Trust grows through repetition.
So does mistrust.
I watched what he did.
He began asking before making plans involving me.
He remembered what I told him.
He called even when there was nothing he needed.
Those were not dramatic gestures.
They were more useful than one.
Jessica and I settled into a distance that neither of us tried to dress up as closeness.
Our exchanges were polite.
About the children.
About visits.
About times and practical arrangements.
I did not bring the ticket into every conversation.
She did not pretend we were suddenly friends.
There were things she had said that I would always remember.
There were things I had done that she might never forgive.
We did not have to resolve every feeling to behave civilly.
I stopped waiting for her to become someone she had not shown me she wanted to be.
That made it easier to speak to her.
It also made it easier to stop speaking when a practical conversation was finished.
The children visited during school breaks.
They brought bags that were larger than they needed and questions that changed with each visit.
Lucas liked the guest room.
Chloe liked opening the back door to see what was growing.
They learned where the cups were.
They learned that Grandma’s house had its own rules.
Shoes could go by the door.
Plates belonged in the kitchen.
I would happily make breakfast, but I expected everyone to carry something.
The first time Lucas asked why he had to help when I had always done it before, I looked at him kindly.
“Because you’re old enough to help.”
He accepted that more easily than I expected.
Children often accept fairness when adults stop making it sound optional.
Chloe liked setting napkins on the table.
She folded them unevenly.
I did not refold them.
The visits were joyful.
They were also tiring.
After the children left, I sometimes sat down for an hour.
I allowed myself that too.
Loving them did not require pretending their energy cost me nothing.
By spring, bluebonnets were appearing around Austin.
The yellow house felt settled.
Arthur’s desk stood where the light reached it.
The porch chairs had become part of the front of the house rather than things waiting to be arranged.
The kitchen smelled of coffee most mornings.
Sometimes cinnamon.
Sometimes nothing at all.
I liked every version.
The scratch-off ticket had been framed.
I placed it beside Arthur’s photograph.
Not in the center of the room.
Not where every visitor would be obliged to ask about it.
Close enough that I could see it when I sat at the desk.
The ticket was small.
The frame made it look almost ordinary.
I liked that.
I did not need it to become a trophy.
It had opened choices.
What I had done with those choices mattered more.
One Saturday afternoon, Colin’s car came up the drive.
The children were out before he had finished gathering their things.
Lucas ran across the grass.
Chloe followed, shouting my name.
I stood at the top of the porch steps and waited for the collision of their arms around me.
“Careful,” Colin called.
They were careful for perhaps half a second.
Then Lucas looked past me.
“Can we go in?”
“After you say hello properly.”
He grinned and hugged me again.
Chloe held on a little longer.
“Something smells good.”
“Cookies.”
Lucas headed toward the door.
I called him back for his bag.
He turned without complaining.
That pleased me more than I let him see.
Colin came up the steps carrying a wooden crate.
He looked less tense than he had in the months before I left.
Not rested, exactly.
More present.
He set the crate beside the chair.
“Thought these might be useful.”
Inside were tomato plants and lavender.
I looked at them for a moment.
Arthur’s favorites.
Colin watched my face.
“I remembered Dad always making room for one more.”
I ran my fingers lightly over a lavender stem.
“He did.”
“I wasn’t sure where you wanted them.”
“We’ll work it out.”
He smiled.
We hugged.
This time, there was no taxi waiting.
No notice on a kitchen counter.
No moment he needed to rescue from what had already happened.
He had come to spend the afternoon.
We carried the plants into the garden.
The children found Helen’s dog and began a game that involved far more running than the dog appeared to think necessary.
Helen sat near the porch, calling occasional advice that nobody followed.
Colin and I looked at the space along the edge of the garden.
He asked where I wanted the lavender.
I pointed.
He knelt.
The soil crumbled beneath his fingers.
For a moment, I saw Arthur in the movement.
Then Colin looked up with a question, and he was entirely himself.
“How deep?”
I told him.
He made the hole larger.
We planted slowly.
He did not check his phone every few minutes.
He did not ask whether I could keep the children later than arranged.
We talked about the townhouse, about school, about how quickly Lucas seemed to be growing.
Then we worked in silence.
It was a comfortable silence.
That had been missing for a long time.
Jessica had not come.
I did not ask Colin to explain her absence.
The arrangement was better for the afternoon.
I could welcome my son without turning the visit into a test of whether every person in the family had reached the same place.
They had not.
Neither had I.
While we worked, Chloe came over to inspect the tomato plants.
“Do tomatoes come out of the flowers?”
“Eventually.”
“How many?”
“We’ll have to wait and see.”
She frowned.
Children dislike answers that require patience.
So do adults.
I handed her a little water and showed her where to pour it.
She concentrated so hard that her tongue appeared between her lips.
Colin watched.
Then he looked at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
But his expression stayed soft.
I knew he was seeing an ordinary moment he might once have passed through without noticing.
That was enough.
We ate later.
The children talked over one another.
Helen corrected a detail in a story Colin was telling about his childhood, and he insisted she remembered it wrong.
I knew she did not.
I let them argue pleasantly.
There was laughter at my table.
Nobody was the price of it.
After dinner, Lucas and Chloe settled inside with a movie.
Helen went home.
Colin carried the plates to the kitchen.
I washed.
He dried.
It was not a grand repayment.
It was dinner, and there were dishes.
Two adults were there.
Two adults helped.
I found that more moving than any speech could have been.
When we finished, we took our tea onto the porch.
The light was leaving the street slowly.
A neighbor passed and raised a hand.
I waved.
Colin sat in the other rocking chair.
For a while, we listened to the children laughing inside.
Then he reached into his pocket and brought out a folded piece of paper.
“The trust documents came,” he said.
I nodded.
“Richard told me they had been sent.”
He looked down.
“Lucas and Chloe are taken care of.”
“Their education will have support.”
“More than support.”
I smiled faintly.
“Arthur and I wanted them to have a good beginning.”
Colin folded the paper again.
“You could have decided not to do any of that.”
“Yes.”
The answer was important.
A gift chosen freely meant something different from an obligation extracted through family.
He understood.
“I know you weren’t doing it for us.”
“I was doing it for them.”
He nodded.
The children were not a bridge I would use to force their parents back toward me.
They were themselves.
I wanted their futures to remain larger than our mistakes.
Colin rested the folded paper on his knee.
“When Jessica bought that ticket,” he said, “she thought it was a joke.”
I looked out at the garden.
“I know.”
“And I laughed.”
“Yes.”
He was quiet.
I did not rush to tell him it had not mattered.
It had mattered.
That did not mean we had to live inside the moment forever.
“I keep thinking about you standing at the sink afterward.”
I remembered the cake server.
The crumbs.
The folded ticket warming in my pocket.
“You were clearing everything up.”
“Yes.”
“On your birthday.”
I turned toward him.
He looked ashamed.
There was no useful answer except the truth.
“I had learned not to expect anyone else to do it.”
He closed his eyes briefly.
“I wish I could change that evening.”
“You can change the next one.”
He nodded.
Inside, Chloe laughed so loudly that both of us smiled.
A small ordinary future existed in that sound.
Not a return to the old arrangement.
Something better, if we took care of it.
I reached into my pocket for my key ring.
A little metal charm shaped like a ticket hung beside the keys.
Colin noticed it.
I let it rest in my palm.
“I used to think leaving would mean admitting I couldn’t make the family work,” I said.
He listened.
“Then I realized I was trying to make it work by disappearing a little more every day.”
His eyes filled.
“I didn’t see it.”
“No.”
I closed my fingers around the keys.
“The money made it possible to choose quickly. It didn’t make me more deserving of a choice.”
“I know.”
“I need you to know it when there’s nothing extraordinary happening. When someone is tired. When dinner isn’t ready. When asking me would be easier than doing it yourself.”
He looked at me steadily.
“I’m trying.”
“I can see that.”
The words were not forgiveness for everything.
They were recognition of what he had begun doing.
We sat until the sky darkened.
At one point, he leaned across and kissed my cheek.
“I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too.”
It was good to say it without a favor following.
Later, after the children were asleep and Colin had gone home, I walked through the quiet rooms.
There were cups to put away.
A folded blanket on the sofa.
A pair of small shoes beside the guest-room door.
I left the blanket until morning.
In the sunroom, Arthur’s photograph stood beside the framed ticket.
I touched the edge of the desk.
The house smelled faintly of lavender from the plants waiting to settle into the garden.
I thought about the woman I had been at the kitchen island on my birthday.
How carefully she had kept her face still.
How quickly she had risen to clear the plates.
I felt tenderness for her.
She had not been foolish to love her family.
She had only waited too long to include herself among the people whose needs mattered.
I turned off the lamp.
Outside, the porch chairs stood in the dark.
Tomorrow, I could sit there.
Or go out.
Or spend the morning doing very little.
There would be people I loved, plans to make, disappointments and pleasures I could not predict.
But the key was in my pocket.
The rooms were mine.
And when I woke, I would decide how the day began.
END PART 3
