Chapter 10 - We Are Safe Now
Six months later, Grace and I were sitting on a picnic blanket in the park near our new apartment.
She still wore her glasses every day. She had two backup pairs now — one at home, one in my work bag. She checked them sometimes, like she needed to make sure they were real.
We didn’t see my parents often.
When we did, it was in public places with clear rules. My mother had finally stopped defending Lauren. My father still struggled, but he had started sending Grace small cards with drawings he made himself. She kept them in a box under her bed.
Lauren was no longer part of our lives.
Her name didn’t come up in our house. Her children didn’t ask about their cousin anymore. The version of the story she had tried to spread had slowly stopped working when people realized I wasn’t coming back.
Grace was different now.
She laughed louder. She asked for things without apologizing first. She still had quiet days, but they were fewer.
One afternoon, while we were packing up from the park, she looked at me and said something I will never forget.
“Mom?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“I like our life now.”
I stopped folding the blanket.
“Why’s that?”
Grace adjusted her glasses — the third pair we had bought since that night.
“Because I don’t have to be scared that someone will break my things and say it’s my fault. And because you always believe me.”
I had to blink hard to keep my voice steady.
“I will always believe you,” I said. “Even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.”
Grace smiled — the real one, the one that reached her eyes.
We walked home holding hands.
The city moved around us like it always did.
But inside our small apartment, with Grace’s books on the shelves and her glasses safe on her nightstand, we had built something stronger than the family I grew up in.
We had built safety.
We had built trust.
And we had built it on purpose.
May you like
No one was going to break that.
Not ever again.
