On a Friday night in October, I ran into our high school principal in the checkout line at the Westport grocery. He was older, smaller. The clerk couldn’t get the price of the pears to scan. We laughed. “Kayla Brooks,” he said, pleased with himself for recognizing me. “You turned out.” I thought of the times he’d sent me to the counselor’s office not because I was in trouble, but because I looked tired. “You turned out, too,” I said. On the walk to my car, leaves scudded across the pavement in little gold scraps. I stood for a long moment with the door open, listening to the scrape.
In November, on the one‑year mark of the ambush wedding, I drove to the river before sunrise with a thermos and a letter to my mother I’d never write. The water was gunmetal and then pink and then exactly the color of my old wool coat. Geese arrowed across the sky. People were already out—runners, cyclists, a man lifting his toddler up so she could see a barge nose under the bridge. I poured coffee, let the steam fog my glasses, and whispered, “I did okay,” to the empty space beside me. It wasn’t a prayer. It was a report.