I lifted her against my chest.
She smelled like sunscreen and grass.
“Did you see the huge one?” she demanded.
“I saw it.”
“It was this big!”
She stretched her arms as wide as she could.
I kissed her cheek.
Over her shoulder, sunlight moved through the oak branches.
For a brief moment, I remembered that hospital room.
The dark.
The voices behind the door.
My hand shaking beneath the blanket.
Evan calmly discussing a future in which I did not exist.
Back then, I thought surviving meant stopping him.
I know better now.
Stopping him was only the beginning.
Surviving meant everything that came afterward.
It meant watching Sophie take her first steps.
It meant rebuilding the company my mother left me.
It meant learning that being betrayed did not make me foolish for having trusted someone.
It meant discovering that the life Evan tried to steal had never belonged to him in the first place.
Sophie wrapped her arms around my neck.
“Mommy, more bubbles.”
I smiled.
“More bubbles.”
And as I carried my daughter back across the lawn, I understood something I wished I could have whispered to the terrified woman lying awake in that hospital bed two years earlier.
Evan had believed the following morning would be the end of my story.
May you like
He was wrong.
It was the first morning of the rest of it.
