Chapter 10 - The Garden at Sunset
Seven months later, the spring had finally arrived in full, glorious force across northern Illinois.
The grass in my backyard was thick, deep green, and bordered by rows of purple irises and white hydrangeas that I had planted myself with a hand trowel while Lily sat on a wool blanket in the afternoon sun, babbling at the robins hopping through the clover.
She was eight months old now.
She was sturdy, with round, chubby thighs, two sharp little bottom teeth that showed whenever she laughed, and a head full of wild, dark curls that smelled of sweet almond oil and sunshine. She was crawling with ferocious, joyful speed, pulling herself up against the cedar posts of the porch, shouting syllables at the world with a voice that was loud, clear, and completely unafraid.
The wooden gate clicked open.
Dr. Hannah Patel walked through the garden path, wearing gardening gloves and carrying a flat wooden crate filled with heirloom tomato starts from the local greenhouse.
"Look at this girl," Hannah laughed, setting the crate down on the grass and scooping Lily into her arms, blowing a loud raspberry against her neck until Lily shrieked with delight, her little hands grabbing Hannah’s dark curls. "You’ve gained another pound, haven't you, little bird? Look at those cheeks!"
We sat on the wooden bench beneath the shade of the weeping willow, sipping iced lemonade from tall mason jars while Lily chased a large, iridescent beetle through the grass with intense, furrowed-brow concentration.
"Evelyn called me this morning," Hannah said, taking a sip of her drink.
I looked at her. "Did the sentencing clear?"
Hannah nodded. Her face was peaceful, carrying the quiet, settled satisfaction of a physician whose patient was safe, and whose community had been purged of a predator.
"Judge Thornton rejected the defense's motion for probation," Hannah said softly. "Seven years at Logan Correctional Center. Mandatory seventy-five percent service before parole consideration. She was processed into the facility at eight o'clock yesterday morning."
I looked out at the garden, at the purple irises swaying gently in the afternoon breeze.
Seven years.
Judith Caldwell would spend her sixty-third through her seventieth years in an institutional room with concrete walls, wearing coarse gray cotton trousers, eating cafeteria meals off plastic trays, and sleeping on an iron cot that did not have French silk sheets.
There would be no grandmother showers.
There would be no photographer to capture her holding another woman's baby beneath a pastel arch.
There would be only the cold, unyielding silence of a state institution that did not care who her husband had been, how much her family trust held, or what her opinions on child-rearing were.
"And Ryan?" I asked.
"Arthur Vance negotiated a deferred prosecution agreement for him," Hannah replied, setting her glass down on the wooden slats. "Three years of probation, five hundred hours of community service at an urban pediatric health clinic, and forty-eight weeks of supervised parenting therapy. He took a job as a title clerk for an insurance company in Rockford. He lives in a one-bedroom apartment above an auto body shop."
Lily let out a triumphant shout from the grass, holding up a dry maple leaf she had captured between her hands, waving it in the air like a gold medal before crawling at a dead sprint toward my knees.
She hit my shins, threw her chubby arms around my leg, and pulled herself up into a standing position, her face flushed with the immense, glorious victory of simply being alive.
I reached down, scooped my daughter into my arms, and held her tight against my collarbone.
Her heart beat against my ribs—a strong, rapid, beautiful rhythm: one hundred and twenty beats per minute, regular as an atomic clock, filling my chest with a warmth that completely erased the memory of that gray, silent lawn.
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"Mama," she babbled, her tiny, sticky hand patting my cheek, her bright hazel eyes looking straight into mine with that pure, uncomplicated trust that only belongs to children who have been kept safe from the wolves.
"I’m right here, Lily," I whispered, kissing the sweet, sun-warmed curve of her neck as the sun began to dip behind the willow trees, painting the garden in strokes of rose, amber, and gold. "I’m right here, and nobody is ever going to take you away again."
