And when Katherine called six weeks later to tell me he’d died, I felt nothing.
No grief. No relief. No anger.
Just nothing.
He was gone.
And my life went on.
Sophie started preschool that fall.
She made friends easily, her bright laugh filling the car on the drive home every day.
“Mama, I painted a rainbow!”
“Mama, we learned a song about frogs!”
“Mama, can Emily come over to play?”
Every day was full of her joy.
And every day, I fell more in love with the life we’d built.
One evening, after I’d tucked Sophie into bed, I sat in my office and looked at a photograph on the desk.
It was from my wedding day.
Me in a white dress. Richard beside me, smiling.
I’d kept it, not out of sentiment, but as a reminder.
A reminder that monsters don’t always look like monsters.
That trust can be weaponized.
That survival requires vigilance.
But as I looked at it now, I realized I didn’t need the reminder anymore.
I knew who I was.
I knew what I’d survived.
I didn’t need a photograph to remember.
I took the picture out of its frame, tore it in half, and threw it away.
Then I replaced it with a new photo.
Sophie and me, laughing in the garden, dirt on our hands and sunlight in our hair.
That was the only image I needed.
The only reminder that mattered.
We survived.
We built something beautiful.
