I was the woman who had kept her word after the door closed.
Tom’s lie had taken years from our family.
It had damaged relationships that could not simply be restored by exposing him.
But it had never taken my service.
It had never taken my marriage, my daughter, my work, or the life I built while they looked away.
And as I crossed the courthouse steps, I understood something I had been too young to understand twelve years earlier.
The truth had not suddenly become true because my parents finally saw it.
It had been true every single day without them.
