“Because she’s out of our lives for good.” My tone leaves no room for questions. “Do you trust me?”
He nods.
I press a kiss to his temple. My brave boy, trying so hard to hold everything together when he shouldn’t have to.
The last few weeks have felt like being dropped into someone else’s life. A life where my father had an affair with Maya’s mother, and I had to watch my mother fall apart in front of me. Followed by Colin telling me about the miscarriage.
And then… Maya’s arrest.
I feel like a character in one of those novels I’ve always loved. Except here, the pain isn’t a plot point, there’s no guarantee of a happy ending on the last page and no promises of healing. I keep wondering what kind of author writes a story like this… and whether she’ll ever let her heroine rest.
Or if my life is destined to remain one endless, aching cliffhanger.
Maya’s arrest still rattles me. The thought that selfishness, rage, and obsession can eat a person alive from the inside until all that remains is the need to destroy whatever still stands around them. And the fact that she used the money from selling those confidential documents to pay for something as cruel as that article—it feels as though Colin himself financed our ruin.
When I found out Mark was the one behind the discovery, anger and fear surged through me all at once. He’d promised hewouldn’t take any risks, had looked me in the eye the day that article was published and sworn he’d stay out of it.
But he assured me his name was nowhere in the report, that he’d only given Colin what couldn’t compromise him, along with the directions the IT department needed to follow the trail he’d already uncovered.
Or, as Mark put it,“Making them actually do the job they’re paid for—instead of signing up for another shiny new dating app.”
I don’t know what will happen to Maya now. Prison. Rehabilitation. A new chapter, or just the same tragedy repeating itself.
I only pray our paths never cross again—not even as a headline.
I squeeze Ethan’s hand gently, grounding us both.
“How have your first therapy sessions been?” I ask, keeping my voice soft.
“Good,” he admits after a pause. “I didn’t think I’d like it. I barely talked in the first two sessions. But Alan’s nice. He’s the one who convinced me to ask you about… you know.”
I give him a tight smile.
“I’m sorry I didn’t realize you knew. I should’ve seen it after we got back from Stone Ridge—you seemed so closed off.”
Ethan shakes his head. “No. I was being stupid. And for a while… I wanted to pretend I never heard that conversation. But now it doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
I nod, asking him to share a little more about his sessions, only what he wants to, no pressure.
When I accompany them to the clinic, I always make a point to talk to Alan and to Patricia—Alicia’s therapist—before we leave. Same schedule every week. It’s our new routine, a patient effort to fix what was broken.
Alicia is still more withdrawn than before. There’s a seriousness in her now that she’s too young for. She’s changing in invisible ways, too. Changes that scare me because I’m powerless to stop them.
She doesn’t call me Mommy anymore.
Now it’s just Mom.
I know she isn’t punishing me—she’s just growing, grieving in her own way—but I miss the version of her who used to say it. Part of me wishes she’d stay my little girl forever.
Her clothes have changed too. The last time we went shopping, she chose only dark colors, claiming anything else was “too babyish.”
Now it’s jeans, band T-shirts she discovered through friends at her new school, and white sneakers she customizes herself with the colorful markers we bought that day. Small bursts of color, tiny rebellions making them a little more hers.
But one moment that day cut straight through me.
When I offered to stop by her favorite stationery store—the one where we always bought stickers and gel pens for her diary—she just shook her head.
“I don’t really use my diary anymore,” she said.
