But along the way I've made more mistakes than that one. Probably the biggest of them was not accepting the inevitability of change more than twenty years ago. Rather than imagine a new life, I pretended about the old one. And for that I have surely paid a price. In my darker moods, I feel the cost has been too high, that fate has exacted an unfair revenge. But most of the time, when I think of how much worse it all could have turned out, I realize I have been lucky. It does not matter, though. I am going on. I have never doubted that.
My initial days out of confinement weren't easy. I was not accustomed to other people or much stimulation. I was jumpy around Lorna and for the first week never slept through the night. But I came back to myself. The weather was remarkable, day after sparkling day. I was up before her, and in order not to wake her, I would sit outside in my fleece, looking at the water and feeling the full thrill of life, knowing I still have the chance to make something better for myself.
I go now into the living room, where the forest of framed family pictures decorates the shelves: my parents and Barbara's, all of them gone; our wedding photo; the pictures of Barbara and me with Nat as he grew. A life. I look longest at a portrait of Barbara taken up in Skageon not long after Nat was born. She is uncommonly beautiful, facing the camera with a small smile and a look of elusive serenity.
I have thought often about Barbara's last hours, and on much the same terms as my son, who was always so quick to feel her pain. I'm sure she took some time to foresee how all of this would play out. When that message popped up on the computer during the trial, I wondered if she'd died hoping it would look as if I'd murdered her, that she'd somehow seeded the card as a final revenge. But now I am sure Nat has it right. Barbara's ultimate moments were totally despairing, particularly that she hadn't gotten more from me. Bad marriages are even more complex than good ones, but always full of the same lament: You don't love me enough.
In the months I awaited trial, I thought of Barbara far more than Anna, whom I'd finally left behind. I would come look at these photographs and mourn my wife, occasionally miss her, and far more often try to fathom who she was at her worst. I wish I could say I did my best by her, but that would not be true. Nearly four decades on, I still have no clear idea what it was I wanted from her so deeply, so intensely, that it bound me to her against all reason. But whatever it may be belongs to the past.
In the living room, I stand. I pat the pockets of my shirt, my pants, to be sure I have everything, that I am, in a sense, still all here. I am. In a minute, I will head into Center City to Stern's office to sign away my career on the bench in final settlement for all my folly in recent years. And that's okay. I'm ready to find out what happens next.