She hadn’t spent time on the deck for almost three years, but it was one of those spring days that tempts God to swagger, so she thought it might be alright, that she could bear it for just a little while.

It was a large deck for such a small house, spread out across most of what used to aspire to lawn, but had really only been a patch of struggling weeds that ended where a bank of ivy sloped up to a high fence. Most of the brightly colored furniture she’d bought for the deck was under plastic covers in the garage, but the swing still bore its soft, sun-faded cushions, and it was here that she took her papers and cell phone to try to get some extra work done. She’d promised to edit these manuscripts by Monday morning, and decided that as long as her mind was occupied with impersonal pursuits, she could enjoy the spring morning outside on the deck without an excess of heartache.

She settled onto the swing with a sigh and began to rock gently back and forth, setting a meditative rhythm with just a gentle arching of her ankles. The motion relaxed the muscles in her neck and shoulders, so that instead of spreading her papers on her lap as she had planned, she rested her head against the back of the swing and gazed up at the trees surrounding the deck. The white dogwood was in full bloom, and the branches of the redbud traced a delicate maze of deep magenta across the deep green of the ivy bank. The daffodils she’d planted around the perimeter of the yard were almost over, their bright yellow trumpets poised for a final cadenza. Looming over everything was the giant old willow oak that, in the fall, rained tiny acorns onto the deck’s wooden planks, sending her to sleep night after night with a sort of popcorn lullaby. March winds had blown most of this arboreal detritus away with the last of the snow, so that, in spite of being ignored and unoccupied for over two years, the deck looked almost freshly swept.

Her hand played with the stack of papers she was supposed to edit as her mind wandered dangerously, but inexorably, back to where all of this started, back to the feeling of slow strangulation as he abandoned her by inches, back to the desperate schemes to make him stay. The deck had been one of those schemes. He’d scoffed at the notion that they needed one, pointing out that they didn’t have many friends to invite over, and if they wanted to experience the outdoors, there was always the park across the street. But she had insisted, becoming energized by the process of hiring a contractor, poring over drawings, approving lumber and stains and railing heights. To pay for all of this, she had taken on freelance work, devoting evenings and weekends to earning the extra cash it would take to build this simple space that every day became more and more invested with her desperate hope.

A warm breeze stirred the dogwood and delivered the scent of early honeysuckle from another yard. She yawned, slipped off her shoes, and stretched her bare feet up, down, and around before taking up the rocking once again. The idea that had taken firm root in her imagination, in defiance of her reason and marital history, was that the deck would constitute a new frontier of sorts, neutral territory where they could talk and be together, away from rooms tainted with the stain of loneliness and recriminations. She’d decided that the house was simply too small for a man of his mental energies and need for personal space, driving him to make excuses to be away much of the time. A spacious deck, she thought, would be a place for him to sit alone in the early mornings with his coffee and indulge his growing need for solitude. Somewhere he could be away from her but still be at home. If she did this for him—for them—he would sense her generosity of spirit, her willingness to step out of his peripheral vision at times, if that was what he needed, as long as he stayed within reach.

Watching the deck take shape in the back yard had recalled the thrill of watching the mound of presents under the Christmas tree grow parcel by parcel when she was a little girl. Every day when she got home from work, she would drop her bags on the kitchen table and head out back to measure the builder’s progress board by board. When the floor was finished, before the railings went up, the deck had looked like a giant raft cast adrift on a sea of dandelions. She had gone back inside the house for her camera, insisting that he come out too so she could take a picture. He had reluctantly agreed, posing stiffly, hands stuffed deep into his pockets, in the exact center of the platform, as though he feared falling over the edge.

A fat bumblebee strafed her bare toes before buzzing away to search out more fruitful fare. Cardinals and house finches sang plaintively in the forsythia bushes, shamelessly advertising their amorous intentions. She switched off her cell phone and nestled further into the swing, lifting one foot onto the seat next to her and shifting to lay her head on the padded armrest. The pile of unedited reports slid noisily off the swing onto the floor of the deck, but she didn’t flinch. She closed her eyes and inhaled the breeze, whose warmth and fragrance were working on her like a sedative. Surely this deck had been one of her better ideas. They could have invited people over in the evenings, had a real social life, shared this view, this tranquility, this bounty of nature. She never deluded herself that this would be all it took to keep him with her, but as a token of her fealty, her forgiveness, her devotion, it wasn’t half bad.

She rocked herself a little faster with her foot, noting how this simple effort stirred the air around her, creating a microclimate calibrated for her comfort. Her senses focused inward, away from the sound of distant traffic and the view of her neighbor’s house over the back fence. She closed her eyes and heard nothing but her own breath, felt nothing but the breeze gently raising and lowering the soft hairs of her forearms as the swing arced back and forth. He could have stayed. He could have chosen to share all of this with her. But in the end, of course, it hadn’t been enough to keep him. In the end, she knew, it had never been about square footage. She inhaled another draft of the scented air. A few more mornings like this, and she might begin to believe that it hadn’t even been about her.

Like the bumblebee now worrying the nearby vinca blossoms, a thought began to buzz around the edges of her conscience. What would she tell her boss on Monday about the papers she failed to edit? How would she explain this uncharacteristic lapse in diligence? Weeks from now, amid the tumult of obligations that stalked her working days, when she thought back to this singular morning, what would she recall? How would she justify this idleness and dereliction to herself? She thought about it for a moment, then smiled, her eyes half open against the beckoning sunlight. She would remember the sensation of a warm breeze gently caressing her skin. That was all. That was enough.