The year had folded itself into a softer shape by the time autumn came around again. The pear tree had grown a stubborn confidence, its branches bowing under the weight of small, perfect fruit. At the mill, the playroom mural was a riot of color that still made me pause and smile; at the mansion, the conservatory’s herbs formed a green margin that smelled like memory. We moved through these places as if tenderness were a job we’d all learned to do well.
That morning Conley left before dawn for a hearing across town. He kissed the back of my neck in the dark—brief and steady—and I fell back asleep under the small, lasting echo of it. Angel stayed; she had a mentoring circle that afternoon and a new volunteer orientation to run. The three of us had learned to distribute duties so that none
