It was never about perfection; it was about proof. Proof, night after night, that a promise kept in private could grow louder than the old, frantic stories in their heads. Ally wasn’t chasing miracles—she was stirring them, gently, into hot water, teaching her nervous system that calm could arrive on schedule. Her body, once braced for disappointment, began to unclench around the consistency.
Mia’s changes were just as unremarkable to anyone else: a doorknob wrapped in foil, a glass filled halfway, a kitchen that smelled faintly of softened vegetables instead of skipped meals. Yet every small act stacked quietly into a new kind of certainty. Safety stopped being an abstract wish and became something she could touch, sip, and step past. In the end, neither of them became new people. They simply became people they could finally rely on.
