Winter Garden

by Kristin Hannah

Words mattered. Her life had been defined by things said and unsaid, and now her marriage was being undermined by silence.

Every choice changed the road you were on and it was too easy to end up going in the wrong direction. Sometimes, settling down was just plain settling.

They would always be a family, but if she’d learned anything in the past few weeks it was that a family wasn’t a static thing. There were always changes going on. Like with continents, sometimes the changes were invisible and underground, and sometimes they were explosive and deadly. The trick was to keep your balance. You couldn’t control the direction of your family any more than you could stop the continental shelf from breaking apart. All you could do was hold on for the ride.

And maybe that was how it was supposed to be, how life unfolded when you lived it long enough. Joy and sadness were part of the package; the trick, perhaps, was to let yourself feel all of it, but to hold on to the joy just

a little more tightly because you never knew when a strong heart could just give out.