I built a life that looked whole from the outside, but every room felt slightly misaligned, as if the house itself remembered who was missing. I learned to function around the hollow: buying groceries, answering emails, posing for pictures where my smile never quite reached my eyes. Over time, the sharp edge of blame dulled into a quieter sorrow I stopped trying to explain to anyone, even myself. I told people I “didn’t have children” and swallowed the rest of the sentence.
When she finally appeared on my porch, I braced for judgment that never came. Instead, she offered stories of ordinary safety, of people who had done what I hadn’t. Her presence didn’t erase the night we said no, or the years I let pass without searching harder. But it loosened the knot around my life. We didn’t rewrite the past. We decided, gently, to stop letting it be the only thing that defined us.
