Mom watched me.
“You sure?”
I looked at the bent gold frame.
For almost a year, I had treated those glasses like a relic.
Proof of what Ryan did.
Proof that my mother told the truth.
Proof that I was not imagining the horror.
But we did not need proof anymore.
Ryan was in prison.
My mother was alive.
My father’s letter had been found.
The money had been recovered.
And the marriage I mourned had finally become what it truly was—not fifteen wasted years, not fifteen perfect lies, but fifteen years of my own life that still belonged to me, regardless of the man who had shared them.
I dropped the broken glasses into the trash.
My mother slipped her arm through mine.
We stood together on the porch while the last light faded over the Chesapeake.
Then she whispered, “Ready?”
I looked at the water.
“Yes.”
