Alive.
Impossible to ignore.
Mom rested her hand against the trunk.
“Your father would have liked this,” she said.
I smiled.
“He’d probably complain that it’s too close to the fence.”
For a moment, she laughed.
A real laugh.
Not the careful version she had learned after prison.
The sound caught me off guard.
Because for years, happiness had felt fragile around her.
Like glass.
Now it sounded solid.
Human.
Healing.
Not perfect.
But real.
She grew quiet after that.
Then she looked at me.
“You know,” she said softly, “for a long time I hated Victor.”
I didn’t answer.
I hated him too.
The courts had eventually convicted him.
Life imprisonment.
The evidence was overwhelming.
Greed.
Fear.
A lifetime of resentment toward his older brother.
All of it had ended with one murder and six stolen years.
“I wanted him to suffer,” Mom continued.
“I prayed for it.”
