Chapter 15

“I’ll decide then exactly what I want to do.” Should I keep the feeder? Should I keep Eli? “Wendy will be thrilled for now.”

“This is not about Wendy.”

“I never really said it was about Wendy.”

I rose from the sofa in my boxers, walked to the south end of the apartment, stood at the window that overlooked the wilted and weedy back rose garden, and visually consumed the X-shaped plot of land as I had done every day for the last year. The slate walkway still zigzagged through the thorny roses; the cement birdbath shaped like Venus in an oyster shell was perched exactly where Seth placed it three summers before; the hand-painted feeder was empty of birds, next to the Chinese maple tree that offered a bit of shade. If Seth found the apartment again, and his untended garden, he would have been surprised to see it exactly as he had left it: untouched, a memorial that represented our lives together; his place of solace and happiness of days we no longer had shared, lost.