Maggie turned and went downstairs instead.
The living room was gray with pre-dawn light, the furniturecasting long shadows across the floor. She walked to the window and looked out at the front yard, at the maple tree that had grown so large, at the street where her children had learned to ride bikes and had waited for the school bus and had come home from dates and jobs and college.
She had stood at this window so many times. Watching for Daniel's car, back when his coming home still meant something. Watching her children play in the yard, wishing she could freeze time and keep them small forever. Watching the seasons change, spring to summer to fall to winter and back again, the years slipping past like water through her fingers.
“I remember the day we moved in,” she said to the empty room. “Daniel carried me over the threshold. He said it was tradition, even though I told him it was silly. I was pregnant with Michael. I thought we were going to be so happy here.”
She moved to the fireplace, ran her fingers over the mantel where she had arranged family photos with such care. The photos were gone now, packed in boxes, but she could still see them in her mind's eye. Michael's first birthday. Christopher's Little League championship. Lauren's piano recital. Sarah's graduation. A timeline of joy and growth, frozen in frames.
“We were happy,” she continued, still speaking to no one. “For a while. We were genuinely happy. I need to remember that. Before everything fell apart, there were good years. Years when he loved me, when I loved him, when this house was full of laughter and chaos and love.”
She moved through the dining room, touching the table where they had shared thousands of meals. The kitchen, where she had learned to cook and then learned to love cooking, where she had fed her family and nourished their bodies and tried so hard to nourish their souls.
The mudroom, with its hooks for coats and cubby for shoes. The back door that led to the yard, to the garden she had planted and tended for years to the spot where she had confronted thewoodchuck all those years ago, the day Daniel came home and told her he wanted a divorce.
She unlocked the back door and stepped outside.
The air was cold and sharp, the sky just beginning to lighten at the edges. The garden was dormant, the flower beds bare and brown, last year's dead stalks still standing where no one had cut them back. Christopher and Becca had maintained the lawn but hadn't had time for the flower beds. Still, she could see the bones of what she had created beneath winter's lingering grip. The raised beds where she had grown tomatoes and herbs. The border of hydrangeas, their dried flower heads still clinging to woody stems. The old bench where she had sat on quiet evenings, watching the sun set, trying to find peace in a marriage that gave her none.
She walked to the back corner of the yard, to the spot where the woodchuck had made its home all those years ago. The hole was still there, a dark opening in the earth beneath the old fence. She wondered if the woodchuck was still there too, or its children, or its grandchildren, generations of woodchucks living their woodchuck lives, unaware of all the human drama that had unfolded just yards away.
“I was trying to protect my tomatoes,” she said softly, crouching beside the hole. “That's what I was doing when everything changed. Spraying coyote urine and yelling at a rodent while my husband was planning his escape. I had no idea. I had no idea my life was about to explode.”
She sat back on her heels, looking at the yard, at the house, at the life she had built and lost and somehow survived.
“I'm okay now,” she said. “In case you were wondering. I know you're just a woodchuck, and you probably don't care, but I'm okay. Better than okay. I found someone who loves me just as I am. I found a place where I belong. I found a way to be happy that doesn't depend on someone else's approval.”
The hole remained silent, as holes do.
“I'm saying goodbye,” she continued. “To this house. To this yard. To the woman I was when I lived here. She tried so hard, that woman. She gave everything she had, and she thought it still wasn't enough. But that wasn't true. I was enough. I just didn't believe it then.”
She stood, brushing the dirt from her knees, and looked at the house one more time. The windows were still dark, her family still sleeping, unaware that she had slipped out to have a conversation with a woodchuck hole.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “For holding us. For keeping us safe, even when things weren't safe inside. Thank you for being home, even when it stopped feeling like one.”
She turned and walked back toward the house, and that's when she saw Chelsea standing on the back porch, two cups of coffee in her hands.
“How long have you been there?” Maggie asked.
“Long enough.” Chelsea held out one of the cups. “I made coffee. Figured you might need it.”
“How did you know I was out here?”
“I heard you get up. I've slept in enough guest rooms to be a light sleeper.” Chelsea sat down on the porch steps, patting the spot beside her. “Come sit. Tell me what you're thinking.”
Maggie took the coffee and lowered herself onto the step, feeling the cold concrete through her thin pajama pants. The sky was lighter now, pink and gold at the horizon, the day beginning whether she was ready for it or not.
“I was saying goodbye,” she said. “To the house. To the garden. To the woman I was when I lived here.”
“And to the woodchuck?”
Maggie laughed despite herself. “You heard that part?”
“I heard all of it. For the record, I think talking to woodchucks is a perfectly valid form of therapy. Better than some therapists I've had.”
They sat without speaking for a moment, the quiet betweenthem easy and familiar, watching the sunrise paint the sky in shades of orange and pink. Somewhere in the neighborhood, a bird was singing its morning song, and another answered, and soon the air was full of music.
“I'm not sad,” Maggie said finally. “I thought I would be sad, coming back here. But I'm not. I'm...grateful, I think. Grateful for the good years, even though they didn't last. Grateful for the children I raised here, even though their father turned out to be a different man than I thought. Grateful that I survived. That I found myself and then found my way to something better.”
