rage had begged him to choose the simplest, ugliest answer.
He thought about how close he had come to giving Mark exactly what men like Mark need most: a chance to become the victim of someone else’s fury.
Instead, Lily had her life back.
Instead, Mark had his own words stamped into the public record.
Instead, house forty-two was no longer only a place where pain had arrived in the rain.
It was the place where it stopped.
John went back to trimming the roses before dark.
When he finished, he set the shears down, washed his hands at the garden tap, and walked up to the porch where his daughter made room for him without even thinking to ask.
That, more than the trial or the sentence or the whispered reputation that followed, felt like the real ending.
She was home.
And this time, she was safe.
