I had written it that day without remembering.
I touched the words and smiled.
Lily leaned over my shoulder.
“What is it?”
I showed her.
She laughed softly.
“Dramatic.”
“I was under stress.”
Grandma raised her glass.
“To Sarah.”
We all lifted ours.
“To Sarah.”
The sky turned pink over the house Mom had saved for me.
The house Dad had lost.
The house Valerie had tried to steal.
The house that, somehow, had become a home again.
For the first time, I understood something Mom had written.
Truth burns houses down.
But sometimes, after the fire, you find the foundation was stronger than you knew.
And sometimes, the life waiting on the other side is not the one you lost.
It is the one you were owed all along.
