Chapter 18: What Grew Back
The new trees went in that fall.
Not sycamores. The arborist recommended a mixed line: oak, maple, and evergreen, something stronger and better suited for long-term privacy.
I stood there while they planted them.
Mara brought coffee.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
The yard still looked too open.
The ridge still felt too close.
Grief is strange when it attaches itself to land. People think trees are just trees until the empty space starts speaking.
My father’s hands had once packed soil around those roots.
His shadow had moved beneath those branches.
Losing them felt like losing one more piece of him I did not know I could still lose.
But the new trees stood straight in the earth.
Small, yes.
But alive.
And this time, everything was marked, recorded, surveyed, and protected.
Epilogue: The Road Stayed Open ⬇️