old sedan with the keys in her hand, not getting in. Tom walked over. Chloe
hung back by the car, watching — documenting, the way she did.
"Diane," Tom said.
"Tom."
"I hear you," he said. It was all he had. It was not forgiveness — forgiveness
was a country he hadn't traveled to yet, and he wasn't going to lie about the
map. But it was true. He heard her. "Take care of yourself."
"You too," she said. And then, because she couldn't help it, because some
habits outlive their offices: "The mulch vote — make sure they get the rubber
kind. The wood chips wash out in the rain."
Tom almost smiled. "I'll mention it to Howard."
She got in her car. He watched her drive off into the rain, taillights smearing
red on the wet asphalt, and he felt something loosen between his shoulder
blades that he hadn't known was still tight.
On the drive home, Chloe said, "Dad? Do you forgive her?"
The wipers beat. The rain drummed. Tom thought about the towel, the
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syringe, the tablet, the fifth angle. He thought about the beagle at the shelter
— he didn't know about the beagle, but he thought about second chances
anyway, the way you think true things.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "But I don't carry her around anymore.
That's close enough for now."
Chloe was quiet. Then: "Okay." Filing it away. Then, after another mile:
"She looked smaller."
"Yeah," Tom said. "She did."
A year after it began — late summer again, the air thick and gold — Tom
Beckett floated in his pool at 14 Larkspur Lane and watched the light go
down.
It was a Thursday. Nothing was happening, which was the point. Chloe was
on the lounge chair with her laptop, editing the heron series for a regional
youth competition, her bare feet crossed at the ankles, humming something
tuneless. The towel — the towel — was folded beside Tom on the pool's
edge, clean and dry and entirely his own, and his phone lay silent on the side
table next to the paperback he'd been trying to finish for a month. Above
them, the four cameras blinked their small red eyes at the fence, the gate, the
yard, the water. The fifth angle, the doorbell, kept its own counsel by the side
entrance.
"Got it from five angles, Dad," Chloe said without looking up, and Tom
laughed, water moving around his ears.
"You're going to be saying that at my funeral."
"Documenting," she said, and took a photo of him floating, arms spread,
ridiculous and content. "For the record: Dad, unbothered."
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"For the record," Tom said to the sky, "the water's perfect."
The fence stood where it had stood for four years now, seven feet of cedar,
reinforced twice. Beyond it, somebody's sprinkler clicked. Somewhere down
the block, kids were playing the kind of game with complicated rules and no
winners. The Hendersons' dog barked once and then thought better of it.
Oakmont Estates went on being Oakmont Estates — not healed, exactly;
places don't heal the way people do. But exhaled. At rest. The hopscotch grid
had finally washed away in the spring rains, and nobody had drawn a new
one, and that was fine too. Some things you outgrow.
Tom thought about the afternoon it started — 2:17 on a Saturday, the
smartwatch buzzing against his wrist, the two hands over the fence. He
thought about the tablet on the outdoor table, the four feeds, Diane's face
collapsing on the screen. He thought about the courtroom, and Chloe's voice
saying that's not a dispute, that's what happened. He thought about the blue
ribbon on the dashboard, and Marsh's folder, and Doug's truck turning the
corner, and Diane's empty hands in the back row of the clubhouse. He
thought about Bruno the pit bull, who he would never meet, eating his kibble
one piece at a time while a woman read aloud — he didn't know about
Bruno, but he thought about second chances anyway, the way you think true
things without knowing why.
He thought about fences.
Some people build fences to keep others out. Diane had lived her whole
presidency that way — the rules, the notices, the clipboard like a weapon —
deciding who belonged and who didn't, as if a neighborhood were a kingdom
and she its crown. And some people, Tom thought, watching the light go
copper on the water, build fences to keep themselves in. He had done that for
a while too, after the divorce — the cameras, the documentation, the
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vigilance curdling into a wall around the two of them, keeping the world at a
documented distance.
But that wasn't what the fence was anymore. It wasn't what the cameras were
anymore. They were just — his. The yard was his. The pool was his. The
towel was his. Chloe's laughter from the lounge chair was his, and nobody
got to decide what any of it meant except the people who lived here.
"Dad," Chloe said. "Look."
He lifted his head. She turned the laptop toward him. The heron at dawn,
reframed — she'd cropped it tighter, the bird's eye now the center of
everything, bright and unafraid.
"That's the one," Tom said.
"I know," she said. "It got an honorable mention at regionals, by the way. I
didn't tell you because you make a face."
"I do not make a face."
"You make the face." She grinned. "It's fine. I like the face."
He reached over and ruffled her hair, and she ducked, laughing, nearly
dropping the laptop, and the evening went on being an evening.
Tom floated. The water held him. Above, the cameras blinked red, patient as
the heron, keeping their faithful, boring watch over nothing in particular —
and that was the whole victory, the entire thing: there was nothing to watch
anymore. Just a man in his pool. Just a girl with her camera. Just a towel,
folded, waiting.
Some people build fences to keep others out, and some people build them to
keep themselves in — and his, finally, just kept the water in.
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