I had assumed it was part of some clever plan.
Maybe it had been.
But somewhere between legal appointments, late dinners, and mornings when Catherine made me tell her what I wanted instead of what I thought everyone else wanted, the pretending had stopped mattering.
I bent and kissed her cheek.
“Ready, Grandma?”
Thomas made a suspicious coughing sound that was definitely hiding a laugh.
Catherine lifted her chin with perfect dignity.
“Don’t become sentimental, Olivia.
It’s exhausting.”
But she squeezed my hand before getting into the car.
I followed her.
For years, Derek had convinced me that responsibility meant obedience, that peace meant surrender, and that love meant proving I could survive whatever lesson he decided to teach me.
He left me at a bus stop because he wanted me frightened enough to come home grateful.
Instead, that was where a stranger gave me the first thing he had spent years taking away.
A choice.
And once I realized I still had one, I never handed it back.
