Chapter 23

I was in the nursery. The walls were painted a soft yellow — the yellow I had chosen myself, standing in the hardware store with paint chips fanned between my fingers like a hand of cards, laughing at how seriously I was taking it. The sun was streaming in through the sheer curtains, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air like gold filings suspended in amber. I felt a surge of overwhelming love, that specific, fierce protectiveness that had defined the last few months of my life, the feeling that had rewritten every cell in my body to serve a single purpose.