Chapter 10 - Clear Skies over Blue Ridge
One year after the wedding at the vineyard, on a brilliant, cloudless Saturday in October, I drove our minivan up the winding roads of Albemarle County.
In the back, three two-and-a-half-year-olds were chattering in their car seats.
"Look, Mama! Big cows!" Leo shouted, his small finger pressed against the glass as we passed an open pasture.
"Those are horses, Leo," Iris corrected him with the supreme, terrifying authority of a first-born daughter. "Horses have tails like hair. Right, Mama?"
"Right, Iris," I laughed, glancing in the rearview mirror. Max was sitting in the middle seat, clutching his battered yellow rubber duck—its beak still bent sideways from the day he had gripped it for dear life during the family portrait twelve months ago.
We pulled into the gravel drive of a small, family-owned apple orchard three miles down the road from the vineyard where Colin had walked away from us.
The orchard was bathed in amber autumn light. The air smelled of woodsmoke, sweet apple cider, and fallen oak leaves.
I unbuckled the triplets one by one. They tumbled out onto the grass, their tiny boots crunching against the clover, laughing as Buster, our golden retriever, leaped out of the trunk and immediately chased a falling leaf across the picnic area.
A woman walked over from the cider barn, carrying a wooden basket filled with red Honeycrisp apples and four warm, cinnamon-dusted donuts wrapped in butcher paper.
"You made it!" Celia Benton said, dropping the basket onto a weathered wooden picnic table and pulling me into a fierce, warm hug.
Miles was behind her, carrying their three-month-old daughter in a chest carrier, grinning broadly as Leo ran up and tackled his knee.
"Uncle Miles! Look at my boots! They got tractors on them!" Leo announced.
"Those are serious tractors, buddy," Miles laughed, scooping Leo up with one arm while keeping his daughter steady. "Celia, did you get the cider? This kid looks like he’s ready to run a marathon."
We sat at the wooden table in the warm afternoon sun.
I watched Iris carefully peel the paper off her cider donut, her small, round face intensely focused, while Max leaned his head against my side, contentedly munching on an apple slice I had cut for him.
There was no rush. There was no schedule to keep for a corporate partner who didn't care about us. There was no man checking his gold watch, terrified that three beautiful children would disrupt his carefully curated image of perfection.
My phone sat on the table beside the cider basket.
It buzzed once. A calendar notification.
*2:00 p.m. — Colin: Supervised visitation window.*
I didn't open the notification. I knew where he was: sitting in a neutral visitation center in Henrico County, waiting for his two-hour court-monitored window that he rarely used, his life shrunk down to a cramped one-bedroom apartment in Norfolk and a mountain of legal bills he would be paying for the next decade.
I reached out and flipped the phone face down against the wood.
The autumn wind swept through the orchard, rustling the golden leaves of the apple trees, carrying the sound of my children’s laughter across the open Blue Ridge hills.
I picked up my cup of hot cider, leaned back against the weathered bench, and took a slow, deep breath.
May you like
The air was clean. The table was full.
And for the first time in my life, everything in front of me belonged entirely to us.
