Anna used to insist the light was best. Melissa worked in the dirt in old jeans with no performance in it. At one point she reached for a trowel and accidentally called the flower food by the nonsense nickname Anna used. We both went still, then laughed — real laughter this time, painful and warm and undeniably ours.
I did not hand her my bank passwords.
I handed her a watering can.
That was enough.
The house is still mine. My mind is still mine. The accounts Gregory thought he could turn into leverage are no longer within reach of anyone’s opportunism, including my own family’s. And the last time I saw Gregory, he was across a courthouse hallway in a suit that no longer fit properly, staring at the floor while his attorney spoke to him in the low exhausted tone reserved for clients who have finally run out of charm.
He never looked up.
I did.
Then I kept walking.
