Chapter 10 - The Garden We Built
Five years later, the Blue Ridge mountains looked exactly the same, but our lives had expanded into something wild, green, and entirely our own.
We were standing on the back deck of our new home in Asheville—a sprawling, timber-framed house with wraparound porches and a massive stone patio that looked out over the exact same mountain range where we had gotten married.
Down in the sprawling yard, our four-year-old daughter, Lily, was chasing a fat, clumsy rescue beagle through the tall grass, her infectious laughter carrying up over the sound of the wind in the trees.
Val stood beside me, leaning against the wooden railing, holding a mug of steaming coffee. Her hair had a few silver threads catching the morning sun, and she looked more breathtaking than she had in ivory lace.
"The daffodils are finally coming up along the stone wall," Val smiled, nodding toward the garden beds I had spent the last three weekends building with my own hands.
"Took long enough," I murmured, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her against my side. "Turns out mountain soil is stubborn."
"Everything worth having is stubborn, Dan."
She was right.
We hadn't heard from my parents in over three years. Kyle had sent a stiff, obligatory Christmas card two years ago with a photo of his kids in matching sweaters, which I had smiled at, placed on the mantelpiece for a week, and then quietly recycled. Marcus and his family were thriving out in Denver; we talked on the phone every few months, trading stories about barbecue recipes and school districts, two brothers who had finally learned how to talk to each other without a courtroom between them.
The Whitmore dynasty in Richmond was a ghost story now—a cautionary tale whispered among corporate lawyers about overextended credit and the terrible cost of building a family on a foundation of conditional love.
Sometimes, when I looked out at the mountains, I wondered what my father was doing. I wondered if he ever sat on the balcony of that Richmond condo, looking out at the city traffic, and realized that being in the spotlight meant nothing if there was nobody left in the room to clap for you.
But the thought never lingered. It blew away on the mountain wind, replaced by the sound of Lily’s laughter and the warm, steady weight of Val’s hand resting over mine.
"Dad! Look what I found!" Lily yelled, running up the wooden steps of the deck, holding up a crooked, dirt-covered rock she had unearthed near the garden. "It's shaped like a castle!"
I knelt down, looking at the rough, jagged piece of granite in her small, grubby hands.
May you like
"It's the best castle I've ever seen, Bug," I smiled, kissing the top of her head. "Let's go build a wall around it so nobody can knock it down."
She cheered, grabbing my finger and dragging me down toward the grass, pulling me into her world—a world where the seats were never assigned, where everyone belonged in the room, and where the only audience that ever mattered was the one that loved you back.
