Mia looked up at me. In her eyes, the fear was still there, but something else had joined it, tentative and bright as a match flame. "I want to go home."
Home wasn't simply our ramshackle cottage clinging to a cliff. Home was the small castle we had built inside it, that we had constructed together with two spoons and a shared blanket, with burned toast and inside jokes, with a thousand apologies and a promise I had not always kept but had never stopped making: I will not leave you alone in the dark.
That promise had been tested. It had bent under the weight of secrets and lies, but it had not broken.
After everything, the safe place we had built remained ours. We still knew the way back to it.
I tightened my arm around her, relishing the warmth of her shoulder beneath my hand. We walked toward the car together.
"Yes," I said. "Let's go home."
Chapter Fifty
I positioned the canvas on the wall. The watercolor that captured Lake Michigan at sunset, the lighthouse, and the spray of wildflowers. Leah's painting.
The canvas had been slashed, defaced, but the restoration expert had worked miracles. If you looked closely, you could still see where the wound had been, faint seams like scars.
Mia stood in the doorway watching me. We hadn't discussed where to hang it. We knew it belonged here, in our living room, where we could see it every day, a reminder of Leah's life, her creativity.
"Do you think it's straight?" I asked.
Mia tilted her head. "A little higher on the left."
I nudged the corner up. "How about now?"
"Good enough for you, Mom."
I made a face at her; she rolled her eyes. The ghost of a smile touched her lips.
One month had passed since Rowan's arrest. Thirty-one days since the truth cracked open the life we'd built here and revealed the rot festering beneath. The ugliness, the secrets, the lies.
Rowan had been charged with murder in the first degree. She sat in a county jail cell, denied bail, waiting for a trial that would determinewhether she'd spend the next thirty years behind bars. The confession I'd tricked from her had given the D.A.'s office everything they needed to lock her away.
When the detectives searched her home, they found a collection of copied keys hidden in her nightstand, mine included. She kept them like trophies, silent proof of the control and power she wielded over the people who trusted her. The neighbors who'd smiled at her. The mothers who'd sat beside her at fundraisers, galas, and PTA meetings, believing they were safe.
She wasn't in control anymore.
Last week, Camille met us in her office with a stack of papers and a measured smile. With Camille's help, Mia's sentence had been reduced to simple assault. The juvenile family court had sentenced her to 500 hours of community service, in which she'd participate in an anti-bullying program, sharing her story with thousands of students within our local school district.
None of it brought Leah back.
The fallout still haunted us. The unforgiving public did not absolve Mia for her role in the bullying or Leah's death. Not that they should, but the continued media persecution wasn't an easy thing to endure, but we had to.
This was our life now. Choices had consequences. So did our mistakes, however unintended.
I'd put Mia in therapy. Money was tight, it was always tight, but Mia needed this, and I would do whatever I had to do to help her. I'd also removed her social media accounts for the foreseeable future. We talked every night out on the patio, overlooking the water as the sun set fire to the horizon.
Now, the scent of cut grass drifted through the open windows, mingled with the distant thrum of a mower and children's laughter. Outside, early summer had arrived in a burst of green.
Apollo's nails clicked across the floor as he settled at Mia's feet with a contented sigh. She reached down to scratch behind his ears.
I moved into the kitchen and started the coffee maker. We carried steaming mugs to the back patio and stood near the edge of thecrumbling bluff. The concrete had cracked further in recent weeks, with another slab loosening, sloping toward the beach far below.
Like our house, we were living on the edge. Our lives a bit unstable perhaps, but also incredibly beautiful.
The lake and its endless shifting light spread below us. Sunlight on the water flashed like thrown coins. From here, the beach looked smooth, clean, pure.
"Do you ever think about that night?" Mia asked.
