Home Entertainment Game Technology Advertisement Part 2: For eight years, my parents made me leave the house every time my brother brought his fiance over; Mom said, “She comes from a good family, don’t embarrass us”; Dad added, “Just disappear for the weekend”; I did; then one weekend, I never came back; it took them four years to find out where I went.

Just fact.

I turned the page.

Blank.

For years, that blank page would have frightened me.

Now I loved it.

No schedule.

No orders.

No one telling me where to be by eleven.

I put the notebook in my office.

Not as a shrine.

As evidence of before.

Then I started a new one.

Green cover.

First page:

Saturday, April 12.

Opened gates at 8:00 because I wanted to.

The next:

Sunday. Stayed home.

Then:

Wednesday. Closed early. Rain.

Ordinary choices.

Mine.

Five years after Avery walked into my nursery, the church asked me to speak at an Easter planting event.

I said no.

Then yes.

Apparently I had inherited Grandma's habit of changing my mind.

We gathered near Stacey's Dogwood.

The tree was fully established now.

Branches covered in white blossoms.

Suzanne stood nearby.

Avery too.

Ruth sat in a folding chair because we had banned her from ladders and she remained offended.