"I keep thinking about what he said," Emily said quietly. "About how the garden house was going to be the last thing that mattered. Just him and the boards and missing my mom." She shook her head. "He really believed that. He really thought he was done."
"That the best of his life was behind him, and all that was left was finishing one last thing for a woman who couldn't see it." "A lot of people feel that way," Marcus said. "Especially at his age, especially after they lose somebody. They think the story's over. They think all the good chapters already got written."
"But it wasn't over," Emily said. "No," Marcus said. "It wasn't." They walked in silence for a moment, watching Ava leap from line to line. "Can I tell you something?" Marcus said.
"I thought the same thing. Not about being done. I've got Ava. I've got a whole life to raise. But about that part of my life, the loving-somebody part, the having-a-partner part."
He shook his head slowly. "I'd closed that book, locked it, put it on a high shelf, and told myself it was already written, and the ending was sad, and that was just how it was going to be. I was so sure. Five years, I was sure." Emily squeezed his hand. "And then?"
"And then a crazy old man dropped a bunch of boards on the side of the road," Marcus said. "And I made the mistake of turning left instead of right." Emily laughed softly. "Best mistake you ever made." "Best mistake I ever made," Marcus agreed.
They reached the truck. Ava was already there waiting, bouncing on her toes. And as Marcus unlocked the doors, Emily stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Marcus," she said, "when my dad gets out of here, when he's healed up and back to being a nuisance, there's still a garden house that isn't finished." "The inside, the little touches, the things my mom actually wanted."
She looked up at him. "Will you help us finish it? All of us together?" And Marcus understood that she wasn't just asking about a garden house. He looked at Emily. He looked at his daughter waiting in the truck, already family.
He thought about Harold healing in a hospital bed, given more time. He thought about two women he'd loved, one he'd lost and one standing right in front of him, and about a promise he'd made in a hospital just like this one 5 years ago. Promise me you'll really live. "Yeah," Marcus said, his voice thick. "Yeah, let's finish it together."
And somewhere in that parking lot under an evening sky, a man who'd been standing up alone for 5 years finally understood that he didn't have to stand up alone anymore. Harold came home from the hospital 8 days later. And the first thing he did, the very first thing before he'd even gotten his coat off, was try to walk out to the garden house to check on it. "Absolutely not," Emily said, blocking the back door with her whole body. "Doctor said two weeks of rest."