Spring returned almost rudely, as it always does, indifferent to whether anyone feels ready.
The sycamore outside my apartment leafed out in tender green.
One Saturday morning I carried coffee to the window and caught my reflection in the glass: thinner than before, yes; scarred, yes; but unmistakably alive.
Not the girl who had married Jake.
Not the woman who had lain on a kitchen floor waiting to be chosen over convenience.
Not even the furious patient plotting in a hospital bed.
Someone else.
Someone built from all of them and answerable to none.
I touched the faint line at my neck, then the healed ridge beneath the skin over my shin.
Broken bones, my therapist had said once, often heal stronger at the fracture site.
Not unbreakable.
Just different.
More honest about where the damage occurred.
I thought about that as sunlight climbed the walls of my apartment and the city outside went on with its ordinary noise—buses sighing, dogs barking, somebody somewhere dropping a pan and swearing at it.
Ordinary life.
I had once imagined survival would feel like vengeance.
But in the end, vengeance was only the bridge.
What waited on the other side was smaller, quieter, and infinitely more radical.
Peace.
Not all at once. Not forever. Not without scars.
But real.
And after everything the Millers had taken, that felt like the one thing they would never again be allowed to touch.
