I follow Ollie down the corridor, something strange and heavy setting in at the edges of me.
I think, reluctantly, that I might be sad to leave, and I do not want to think about why.
Not yet.
Perhaps it has been the abundance of what I have never had, displayed in the warmest, easiest way, without once making me feel small.
And behind me, there is Joshua.
I can hear his long stride, feel his settled quiet despite the newly charged air around him. And between us, even in this corridor, there is the tension I am finding harder and harder to ignore.
Stepping through the door I slammed shut only yesterday, I finally take in the grounds properly. The redwoods tower above us, their trunks rising into the winter light, and I wonder, briefly, what they have witnessed here over the hundreds o
