Chapter 10
Christmas morning dawned bright and cold.
The snow had stopped overnight, leaving a thick, clean white blanket over everything.
The sun glinted off it, making the whole world look like it had been dipped in diamonds.
I woke up before Gwen and Liam.
I slipped out of bed.
I went downstairs.
I made coffee.
I put the cinnamon rolls in the oven, the ones Gwen loved, the ones her mom used to make.
I stacked the presents under the tree.
Most of them were for Liam.
He was three months old.
He had no idea what Christmas was.
But that did not stop us.
When Gwen came down an hour later, Liam propped on her hip, rubbing his eyes, the smell of cinnamon and sugar filled the whole house.
“Merry Christmas,” I said, smiling.
She grinned.
“Merry Christmas,” she said.
She set Liam down in his bouncer.
He immediately started kicking his legs and cooing at the lights on the tree.
We opened our presents slowly.
Socks.
Books.
A new watch for me.
A necklace for her — simple, small, a tiny diamond set in silver, nothing flashy, nothing that would ever remind her of Brenda or the life we had left behind.
Then I handed her the last one.
Long.
Thin.
Wrapped in red paper.
She frowned.
“What’s this?” she said.
“Open it,” I said.
She tore the paper off.
It was a framed deed.
To a small farm.
Forty acres.
An hour north of the city.
With a big white farmhouse.
A wrap-around porch.
A barn.
And a huge, rolling pasture perfect for a kid to run around in.
Gwen stared at it.
She looked up at me.
Her mouth was open.
“Lucas,” she whispered. “We — we can’t —”
“We can,” I said. “And we are. It’s ours. Free and clear. No mortgage. No strings. We can move whenever you want. Next month. Next year. Whenever you’re ready. It’s ours. Away from the city. Away from the memories in this house. Somewhere new. Somewhere just ours. Where Liam can grow up running in the grass and riding horses and never, ever having to know what it feels like to be afraid in his own home.”
She started crying.
Happy tears.
The best kind.
She threw her arms around my neck and kissed me hard.
“I love it,” she said, laughing through the tears. “I love it so much. I love you.”
“I love you too,” I said.
Just then, the doorbell rang.
I went to answer it.
It was Gavin.
He was holding a huge wrapped present — a giant stuffed teddy bear almost as big as he was — and a pie.
“Am I late?” he said, grinning. “I brought pecan. Your favorite.”
I laughed and let him in.
He set the pie on the counter.
He walked straight over to Liam, picked him up, and tossed him gently in the air, making him shriek with laughter.
For the next few hours, we ate.
We laughed.
We watched Liam try to eat wrapping paper.
We talked about the farm.
About the horses we would get.
About the treehouse I would build in the big oak tree out back.
About all the years ahead of us.
Quiet years.
Happy years.
Years where the only yelling was the sound of kids laughing and running through the house.
Years where the only tears were happy ones.
Years where no one had to be afraid.
Late that afternoon, Gavin left.
Gwen took Liam up for a nap.
I stood at the kitchen sink, washing the last of the dishes, looking out the window at the snow.
I thought about that day, almost a year earlier.
Walking into my own dining room.
Seeing my wife under the table.
Feeling my whole world break.
I thought about all the anger.
All the guilt.
All the fear.
I thought about Brenda.
About the choices she had made.
About the life she had now, alone, three states away, paying for what she had done.
Justice had been served.
Not perfectly.
Not the way you see in movies.
But fairly.
She had been punished.
She had been stopped.
She would never hurt us again.
And we?
We had survived.
We had healed.
We had built something new and beautiful and strong out of all the broken pieces.
I felt two arms wrap around my waist from behind.
Gwen rested her cheek against my back.
Liam was asleep in his crib upstairs.
“Penny for your thoughts?” she said, echoing my words from the night before.
I turned around in her arms.
I wrapped my arms around her.
I held her tight.
“I was just thinking,” I said, “about how lucky I am. That even after everything — after all the mistakes, all the pain, all the things I got wrong — I still ended up with exactly the family I was always meant to have. You. Me. Liam. That’s all that matters. That’s everything.”
She smiled.
She leaned up and kissed me.
Soft.
Slow.
Full of love and promise and all the tomorrows stretching out ahead of us.
Outside, the sun started to set, painting the snow pink and gold.
Inside, the house was warm.
And quiet.
And safe.
And for the first time in my entire life, I knew, with absolute, unshakable certainty:
May you like
Everything was exactly as it was supposed to be.
We were home.
