When the judge finalized the divorce, I walked out of the courthouse into bright autumn sunshine.
Tobias waited on the steps.
“It’s over,” he said.
I looked at him.
“The trial is over. The divorce is over. But I don’t think something like this ever completely disappears.”
He nodded.
“No. But it doesn’t have to control the rest of your life.”
For a long time, I had believed that being strong meant enduring whatever happened to me. I had endured Garrett’s lies, my brother’s silence, and years of not knowing what had really happened to our parents.
Now I understood that strength sometimes meant refusing to endure another minute.
One year later, I stood on the upper deck of a newly restored ship at the Baltimore shipyard.
The morning sun shimmered across the harbor. Below me, workers moved between cranes and steel containers, shouting greetings and checking equipment. The familiar sounds should have reminded me of everything I had lost.
