Keys Returned

Outside, the air had cooled. A few leaves had started dropping early on the trees along the courthouse steps. Sarah stood at the curb with Emily, both of them looking toward the street where the pink Porsche waited under the maple trees. It had taken the court order, the release papers, and one last round of signatures to get the title cleaned up and the case closed, but it was done.

Emily spotted him first. She came down the steps fast, keys in her hand, the same hand she’d once kept clamped tight at her belt line.

“You done?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

She handed him the keys, then thought better of it and slid them back into her own palm. “No. I got it.”

Daniel’s mouth twitched. Sarah hooked her arm through his and gave him a look that said the groceries could wait and so could every other thing on the list.

Emily reached the car, unlocked it, and pulled the door open. The pink paint caught the last of the sun. No tow bar. No orange lights. No one telling her what belonged in a driveway.

She looked back once, smiled, and got in.