Maybe not ever.
But I heard you.”
“Is that enough?”
“It’s going to have to be.”
Clara hung up.
She sat on the edge of her bed for a long time.
She didn’t cry.
She had done all her crying alone, in apartments Margaret had never visited, on birthdays no one called, at graduations no one attended.
She was done with that.
She stood up, walked to the kitchen, and poured herself a glass of wine.
She looked at the diploma on the wall — the one she’d earned, the one no one came to celebrate, the one that proved she had never stopped.
Her phone lit up.
A text from Sophie: “Dinner tonight?
My treat.
”
Clara smiled.
She typed back one word: “Always.”
She set the phone down, picked up her glass, and sat in the quiet of her own home — the kind of quiet that doesn’t feel lonely anymore.
