The Orchardist

But she did not know where the doubt, the fear, began. It had always been there, but she had sought to rearrange it within herself; and in the constant rearrangement was transformation. This is what she told herself; what she hoped. And then when she decided that it was in fact doubt and fear that she felt, she told herself such feelings didn’t matter, ultimately. What mattered was that she was trying to feel otherwise. But the walk to the courthouse proved her undoing: her hand felt cold in Talmadge’s hot one. She could not do it, she decided as they ascended the steps. She was not an adult; she was not benevolent, she was not brave.