Sarah called every Tuesday. She asked if I was eating. She asked if I wanted to go to church with her and the kids.

“Not this week, honey,” I always said.

I lied and told her I had projects in the basement. In reality, I just sat there. I sat and let the hours turn into days.

Not on Thanksgiving.

Not on Christmas.

Not on what would have been her seventy-first birthday in February.

I did not open the door to the backyard. I did not touch her coats hanging in the hall closet. I did not wash her favorite blue mug.

I kept it on the counter, right where she left it, with a tiny ring of dried coffee at the bottom. It felt like if I washed that mug, she would be gone forever.

Then came last Tuesday. It was the first warm morning of April, the kind of day where you can actually smell the earth thawing out under the dead grass.

I accidentally knocked my coffee mug off the counter. It did not break, but the coffee spilled across the linoleum, running toward the back door.

I got down on my knees with a handful of paper towels, and as I was wiping up the dark puddle, my eyes caught the bottom edge of the back door window. The blinds were slightly crooked.

I looked through the small gap, out into the center of the old garden plot.

There was a patch of bright, neon green pushing up through the gray, matted leaves.

My stomach dropped. I stood up, my knees cracking in the quiet kitchen, and unlocked the back door.

The air outside was sweet and cool. I walked down the wooden steps, my old slippers sinking into the damp lawn, until I reached the edge of the tomato bed.

Right there, in the exact spot Marie always planted her early girls, a cluster of volunteer tomato seedlings had pushed their way through the frozen earth.

They were strong. They had thick, hairy stems and tiny green leaves that smelled like summer when I brushed my finger against them.

I did not mean to do it, but my legs just gave out. I sat right down in the wet dirt, right there in my slippers and my old cardigan, and I stared at those little green plants.

“You went and did it anyway, didn’t you, Marie?” I whispered.

I sat there for an hour, maybe longer, just watching the wind move the tiny leaves. I felt a strange warmth in my chest for the first time in six months.

Yesterday, I finally walked down to the metal shed. The key was hanging on the nail behind the kitchen door, right where she always kept it.

The padlock on the shed door was rusty, and I had to muscle it a bit to get it to turn, but it finally clicked open.