“You told them I was dead, Greg,” I said. My voice was very quiet, but it filled the room. “So as far as you’re concerned, I am.”

He signed the papers. His hand shook so badly the pen slipped on the second page, leaving a long, blue streak across the white paper.

He didn’t say another word. He just stood up, took his copy of the folder, and walked out of the bank lobby, disappearing through the heavy glass revolving doors.

That was three months ago.

Yesterday, I took the silver pocket watch down to the jeweler on Main Street. The man there, an old German jeweler named Mr. Keller, looked at it through his little eyepiece.

“It’s a beautiful piece, Diane,” he said. “Your father had good taste. The casing is solid silver.”

“How much is it worth?” I asked.

He offered me twelve hundred dollars. I took the cash and went straight to the nursery at the edge of town. I bought six large, healthy hydrangea bushes—the bright blue ones my mother always loved.

My daughter, Amy, came over this afternoon to help me plant them along the front porch. The soil was rich and dark, and the sun was warm on our backs.

Amy’s four-year-old son, Leo, was running around the yard with the garden hose, soaking his shoes and laughing hysterically. He got his shirt completely covered in mud within ten minutes.

“Mom, he’s a disaster!” Amy laughed, wiping her brow with the back of her dirty garden glove.

“Let him play,” I said, digging my spade into the fresh dirt. “It’s just mud. It washes off.”

I looked at the front of the house, at the sturdy oak beams my father had set so many years ago. The house felt light. The air felt clean. For the first time in two decades, I didn’t feel tired at all.