Court Papers in the Locked Drawer of a Community Doctor
I turned away from him, feeling the heavy burden of the empty years ahead, but also a strange, quiet space opening up in my chest.
My children’s hands holding mine as we walked down the wide stone steps into the autumn sun.
The drive away from the county courthouse had taken forty-five minutes, the tires of the old Buick humming a low, steady note against the asphalt of the state highway. I had stopped at the Shell station near the county line to fill the tank, watching the numbers on the pump spin until they reached forty-four dollars and eighty cents, the price of gas holding firm at three dollars and eighty cents a gallon. The smell of the exhaust and the damp autumn leaves had followed me all the way to the water.
By ten o’clock the next morning, the sun was high enough to warm the grey cedar planks of the cabin deck. I sat in the high-backed wooden rocking chair my father had built from salvaged white pine, my fingers resting on the armrests where the wood had been worn smooth by his hands. Below the deck, the calm surface of Blue Heron Lake stretched out like a sheet of clean slate, reflecting the pale blue of the October sky.
