silver tape.
Blythe sat beneath an oak tree drawing.
I walked over.
“What are you making?”
She held up the page.
Four people.
Me.
Genevieve.
Jonah.
Blythe.
Then I noticed a fifth figure standing beside them.
Elena.
And behind everyone, she had drawn a small blue stone floating in the sky.
“What’s that?”
She looked at me as if the answer were obvious.
“Mommy’s necklace.”
Genevieve approached behind us.
The actual necklace was no longer around Elena’s neck.
After the trial began, Elena had tried to return it.
Genevieve refused.
“You kept my promise alive,” she had told her.
“It belongs to you now.”
Blythe leaned against my side.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Did you save us?”
I looked across the garden.
At Yates laughing with Miriam.
At Elena arguing with Jonah about how much cake a human body could survive.
At Genevieve standing in sunlight when I had spent two years
