Ben came out on the porch.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I keep seeing them,” I said. “The trash bags. Every time I pull into the driveway, I see them.”
He came down the steps and stood beside me.
“Me too,” he said quietly. “Every morning when I get the mail.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever stop seeing them.”
“Then I don’t think I should stop seeing them either,” he said. “I think I should remember. Every day. What I did.”
We stood there together in the dark for a long time.
It was the first time I let him hold my hand again.
Evelyn turned one on a Saturday in October.
We had the party in our backyard, under the maple trees, which were just starting to turn red and orange again. Exactly a year since I’d driven up this street in my dad’s Buick and found my life in garbage bags on the lawn.
