Page 118 of The Yoga Teacher

She swallowed.

“I went to sign the divorce papers today,” she said finally.

Elaine and Robert were quiet. Not surprised. Not pressing.

“I didn’t sign them,” Hannah added, her voice lower now. “I wanted to. I thought I was ready. But…”

“But you weren’t,” Robert said simply.

Hannah looked down at her hands, dirt still crusted at the cuticles. “I don’t even know what that means. If I still want him. If I ever could again. I just—I froze.”

Elaine leaned back, looking out over the rows of lavender and kale. “Some things break so they can be rebuilt stronger,” she said softly.

Hannah blinked.

Robert nodded. “But rebuilding takes courage. From both sides. Not just the one who broke it.”

Hannah’s throat tightened.

Elaine glanced at her, eyes kind. “He’s showing up. Not with words. With action. And that matters. But what you feel? That matters too.”

“I didn’t expect to feel anything,” Hannah admitted. “But now I do. And it’s not anger. Or even betrayal. It’s... something else. Something harder.”

“Hope is harder,” Robert said, with a small smile. “It’s riskier than walking away.”

Hannah let out a breath, half-laugh, half-sob. “I thought I’d feel relief. Signing those papers was supposed to mean freedom. But when I couldn’t do it... it felt like I was still that fool who didn’t realize her husband was cheating on her. I felt weak.”

Elaine reached over and placed a gentle hand over Hannah’s.

For a moment, the sounds of the garden filled the silence between them—shovels scraping, laughter echoing, bees humming lazily near the herbs.

Then Hannah said, almost to herself, “Love makes us foolish.”

Robert chuckled, leaning back. “In the best way.”

The sun was slipping lower now, casting golden light across the soil. Hannah looked out at the rows she’d built with her own hands. The place that had once been just an idea in her head, now alive with voices and roots and color.

Her life had grown here.

And maybe—just maybe—so had something else.

Not forgiveness. Not yet.

But the will to see if something broken could grow back stronger.

She sat with Robert and Elaine a while longer, not talking, just listening to the world she’d created.

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The bench was half-shadowed now, the fading light turning the leaves overhead to burnished copper. Hannah sat still, her palms pressed against the wood on either side of her, fingers splayed, like she needed to anchor herself to something real.

The garden had emptied slowly after Robert and Elaine left. A few of the volunteers had waved goodnight. One of the kidshad hugged her waist without warning before darting off toward their waiting car. The air smelled like basil and damp mulch, and somewhere in the distance, someone’s wind chimes murmured.

She breathed deep.

Robert’s voice still echoed in her mind:Love makes us foolish—in the best way.

She wanted to stay rooted in logic and self-preservation. But her chest was too full, too aching with something messier than reason.

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