Others received less, some more, depending on what they had done and what they helped uncover.
When it was over, reporters shouted outside the courthouse.
I did not stop.
Caleb drove me home.
We sat in the car outside my duplex, engine ticking softly as it cooled. Across the street, a little boy in a red jacket tried to drag a reluctant dog through fallen leaves.
“You okay?” Caleb asked.
“No.”
He nodded.
“I think I will be,” I added.
His eyes filled, but he smiled. “That counts.”
Inside, my home was quiet.
Not empty.
Quiet.
There is a difference.
Empty is what Trent left behind.
Quiet is what I built after him.
In the months that followed, I returned to work part-time. The school kids asked why I had been gone, and I told them I had been sick but was getting better. One second-grade girl with pink glasses hugged my waist and said, “Bodies are weird.”
“Yes,” I said, laughing. “They really are.”
I started walking every morning. At first just to the corner. Then around the block. Then through the park where old men played chess and college students threw Frisbees badly. I learned which coffee shop made the best cinnamon latte and which bench got sunlight before nine.
I went to therapy.
I hated therapy.
Then I needed it.
Then I hated that I needed it.
Then, slowly, I became grateful for a room where I could say terrible things out loud and watch them lose some of their power.
On the anniversary of the CT scan, Caleb asked if I wanted company.
I told him yes.
We went back to St. Mercy Regional together. Not to radiology. Not at first. We sat in the hospital chapel, though neither of us had been especially religious since our mother died.
Caleb lit a candle.
“For the kidney?” I asked.
He laughed under his breath. “For the sister.”
I leaned against his shoulder.
“Thank you,” I said.
He shook his head. “Don’t.”
“I’m saying it anyway.”
“Maren—”
