Someone setting another place at the table.
For months, I had tried to understand Thomas’s final statement.
Exactly what you deserved.
At first, I thought he meant money.
Then the house.
Then the diamond.
Then the truth.
But what I ultimately received was something Thomas could never put into a trust or seal inside an envelope.
I received my past without allowing it to swallow my present.
I received the truth about my mother without losing the love I had for her.
I received Thomas’s letters without diminishing my marriage to Robert.
I received Evelyn’s kindness without pretending we had been friends.
I received Claire and Daniel not as replacements for my own children, but as two complicated adults I had chosen to keep knowing.
And eventually, I received the freedom to stop asking which life I should have lived.
This one.
The answer was this one.
