EPILOGUE II
The Garden That Never Grew
The first thing I notice is the cold.
It isn’t a draft. The windows are closed. The heat is on. But the space beside me in the bed is freezing. It radiates a chill that wakes me up before the alarm does.
I roll over. I reach out.
My hand hits the mattress. The sheet is smooth. Cool to the touch.
"Nora?"
My voice sounds loud in the quiet room. It scratches against the silence.
I blink at the ceiling. The light is grey—early morning, maybe six. The sun hasn't quite cleared the triple-deckers across the street.
She’s probably in the bathroom. Or downstairs. She couldn't sleep. She’s making coffee. That’s it. She’s making coffee.
I lie there for a minute, waiting for the smell. Waiting for that rich, dark scent of French Roast to drift up the stairs. Waiting for the sound of the spoon clinking against the mug.
Nothing.
Just the radiator hissing. Just a car driving by outside, tires wet on the pavement.
I sit up. I rub my face. My head hurts—a dull throb behind the eyes.
"Nor?" I call out again. Louder this time.
Silence.
A bad feeling starts in my stomach. A heavy, cold stone dropping into water.
I get up. I pull on my sweatpants. I walk out into the hallway.
The bathroom door is open. The light is off.
I look in. Empty. The shower curtain is pulled back. The tub is dry.
I look at the sink.
Her toothbrush is gone.
The green one. It’s always in the cup next to my blue one. The cup is there. My brush is there. But the green one is gone.
The stone in my stomach drops lower.
I turn around. I walk back into the bedroom. I go to the closet.
I slide the door open.
Her side is... thinned out.
Her winter coat—the grey wool one—is gone. Her boots are gone. The duffel bag that usually sits on the top shelf is gone.
I stare at the empty hangers. They are wire hangers. They jangle slightly from the vibration of my footsteps.
She’s gone to the gym, I tell myself. She packed a bag for the gym.
But Nora doesn't go to the gym at six in the morning. And she doesn't take her winter coat to run on a treadmill.
I turn around. I run down the stairs. I skip the creaky step out of habit.
The living room is dark. The curtains are drawn.
"Nora!" I shout.
My voice echoes. It bounces off the walls. The house feels different. It feels bigger. It feels hollow, like the furniture has been removed, even though everything is still there.
I run into the kitchen.
It’s empty. The coffee pot is cold. The sink is dry.
I look at the fridge.
The magnet is there. The little clips are there. The menu for the Thai place is there.
But the sonogram is gone.
The jellybean. The fake one. The one we laughed about. It’s been there for months. I stopped looking at it after... after everything. But I knew it was there.
Now, it’s just a blank white square of refrigerator door.
I spin around. I look at the table.
And then I stop.
There, in the center of the oak table, perfectly aligned with the grain of the wood.
My key.
The silver key to the front door. The one I gave her three years ago. The one that meant you live here. This is your home.
It sits there, glinting in the grey light.
Next to it is a photo.
I walk over. My legs feel heavy, like I’m wading through wet concrete. I put my hand on the back of a chair to steady myself.
I look at the photo.
It’s us. From the harbor. Three years ago? Maybe four.
I’m laughing. My arm is around her. I’m pulling her in tight, like I’m afraid she’ll blow away. She’s smiling—a real smile, eyes crinkled, hair whipping across her face.
I look at my own face in the picture.
I look happy. Not the "I'm trying to be happy" look I see in the mirror lately. Not the "I hope I don't screw this up" look.
Just happy.
I look like a man who has everything he wants.
I pick up the photo. My fingers leave a smudge on the glossy paper.
I look at the key.
I don’t pick it up. I can’t touch it. If I touch it, it’s real. If I touch it, she’s really gone.
I sit down in the chair.
I sit there for a long time. The refrigerator hums. The house settles.
I pull my phone out of my pocket.
I dial her number.
It rings.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
"Hi, this is Nora. Leave a message."
Her voice is bright. Professional. It’s the voice of the woman who lived here yesterday.
I hang up.
I call again.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
"Hi, this is Nora..."
I hang up.
I call again. And again. And again.
I call her seventeen times.
I count them. Seventeen red outgoing arrows in my call log. Seventeen times I beg the universe to let her pick up. Seventeen times the universe says no.
On the eighteenth time, it goes straight to voicemail.
She turned it off.
I lower the phone. I stare at the screen until it goes black.
She’s gone.
The realization hits me not like a panic, but like an exhaustion. A massive, crushing wave of fatigue.
She didn't leave a note. She didn't scream. She didn't fight.
She just left.
She packed her bag, took her toothbrush, and walked out the door while I was sleeping.
I look at the photo again. The boy in the picture is grinning at me. He thinks he’s so smart. He thinks he’s so safe. He thinks that because he loves her, that’s enough.
He doesn’t know that love isn’t enough. He doesn’t know that you have to choose it, every single day. He doesn’t know that if you look out the window long enough, eventually, the person sitting next to you will get up and leave.
I put the photo down.
I stand up. I need air. The kitchen feels too small. The blue walls are closing in.
I walk to the back door. I unlock it. I step out onto the porch.
It’s cold out here. The air is damp, smelling of rain and dead leaves. I’m barefoot. The wood of the deck is freezing.
I walk down the steps.
I walk into the yard.
It’s not really a yard. It’s a patch of dirt. Hard-packed, grey, uneven dirt enclosed by a chain-link fence.
I stand in the middle of it.
The cold seeps into my feet. It travels up my legs. It numbs me.
I look at the ground.
We talked about this. We talked about it for years.
“Tomatoes,” she said. “Right here. Where the sun hits.”
“And peppers,” I said. “For salsa.”
“And flowers,” she said. “Hydrangeas. Blue ones.”
We planned it. We measured it. I bought a shovel. I bought gloves.
But I never dug the holes.
I was always too busy. Or too tired. Or too... something.
I thought we had time. I thought the dirt would wait. I thought she would wait.
I look at the empty ground. There are no tomatoes. There are no peppers. There are no blue flowers.
There is just dirt.
And weeds. Wiry, brown weeds that have pushed their way through the hard earth, surviving on neglect.
I shiver. The cold is inside me now.
I look back at the house.
It looks the same. The brick is the same. The windows are the same.
But the light is gone.
I don’t mean the lamps. I mean... the thing that made it a home. The thing that made it warm.
She was the warmth. She was the fire in the fireplace. She was the anchor that kept the whole thing from floating away into space.
And I cut the rope.
I didn't mean to. Or maybe I did. Maybe I cut it a little bit every day. Every time I looked at my phone instead of her. Every time I walked away from a hard conversation. Every time I wished I was somewhere else.
I wished for lightness. That’s what I told her. I wanted to be light.
Well. I’m light now.
I am weightless. There is nothing holding me here.
I could walk out of this yard right now. I could get in my truck and drive. I could go anywhere.
But I can't move.
My feet are frozen to the ground. Rooted in the dirt where nothing grows.
I look at the photo in my hand. I brought it outside with me. I didn't even realize I was holding it.
I look at her face.
"Nora," I whisper.
The wind takes the name. It snatches it out of my mouth and carries it away over the fence, over the rooftops, toward the north.
"Please come home."
I say it to the dirt. I say it to the weeds.
But I know.
Home isn't this brick box. Home isn't the blue kitchen. Home isn't the bed with the cold sheets.
Home was her.
And she left the key on the table.
I stand there. The sun rises higher. It hits the dirt. It illuminates the nothingness.
I stand there until my feet are numb. Until my hands are shaking. Until the tears finally come, hot and useless, tracking through the stubble on my cheeks.
I stand in the garden that never grew, and I wait for a harvest that will never come.