Healing Her Heart

The cottage smelled of lavender and dust, the way her grandmother's hands had smelled at the end. She set her bag down on the kitchen table and, for the first time in two years, allowed herself to cry without apology.

Outside, the wind moved through the orchard the way it had always moved through the orchard. It seemed an indecent kindness, that the world had gone on being exactly itself while she had not.