Judith said nothing.
“The wooden horse is Daisy,” Mike said. “The new one’s Sunny. Her favorite meal is mashed potatoes with milk and a little butter. She’s afraid of sudden loud noises, though less than she was two months ago. I know that because I’m here. Every day.”
Judith looked at him. Something in her shifted. Not remorse—she’d have to be a different person for that—but something. She pressed her lips together.
“See you in court,” Daniel said. Quietly. Angry.
“You will,” Mike said. “Lawyer’s ready.”
The car drove off. This time there was something final about it, the way a wave goes out knowing it won’t come back over the same ground. Maybe Daniel had realized he wasn’t going to break anything here. Maybe a lawyer had explained how the highway story would sound in court. Maybe Judith decided she never really wanted a granddaughter in the country anyway; she just wanted to be right. Whatever the reason, they never came back again.
The hearing was in April. They found the truck driver. Andrew Collins turned out to be persistent: he found the company, found the route, found the driver. The man remembered, of course he remembered. You don’t forget a young woman and a little girl on the highway at night in a snowstorm wearing house clothes.
The medical records were found. Witnesses were found. Ellen gave her statement calmly and in detail, like somebody who had something to say and wasn’t afraid to say it. Daniel failed to appear at the second hearing. Sophie stayed with her mother. Primary residence: Mill Creek, at the home of Michael Garrison. The divorce was granted.
Sarah walked out of the courthouse and stopped on the steps. Mike stood beside her. She took several deep breaths, just breathing the April air, still a little cold but already carrying the smell of dirt and last year’s grass.
“That’s it?” she said.
“That’s it,” he said.
She nodded.
They walked to the truck. They had to head back. Sophie was with Ellen. The chickens needed tending. The heifers had arrived a week earlier and were still settling in, still a little skittish. Home was waiting.
Summer came all at once, without much warning. By May it was already pushing eighty, and the grass came up fast and thick. The whole town smelled of warm earth and blooming chokecherry behind Ellen’s house.
At the Garrison farm they had hired two young men from town, Tyler and Ben, neither with much experience but both willing and handy. Mike taught them patiently, without yelling, the way people teach when they know a job down to the last bolt. The cows gave milk: two buckets in the morning, one and a half in the evening.
Sarah worked out a deal with a store in town. Every other day milk went there in cans, and they paid cash. Not much yet, but honest and steady. The garden stood green and thick. The tomatoes climbed, Laura’s cherry tomatoes and Sarah’s planted side by side. By then there was no telling which plants came from which packet, and there was no reason to.
Sophie ran around the yard after the chickens, not trying to catch them, just running along with them. The chickens weren’t afraid of her anymore. Rusty trotted after her. This was her town, her yard, her chickens. She knew that for sure.
One day Ellen said to a neighbor over the fence:
