Rowan looked at the road stretching beyond them. “I think about that day a lot.”
“So do I.”
“I was cruel.”
“Yes.”
“I was blind.”
“Yes.”
He glanced at her. “You don’t soften anything, do you?”
“Not anymore.”
“Good.”
Megan watched Noah offer Ellis a leaf, which Ellis accepted with deep suspicion.
After a while, she said, “I used to think that day was the worst day of my life.”
Rowan’s throat tightened. “And now?”
“Now I think it was the day the lie finally ran out of road.”
He looked at her.
She reached for his hand.
This time, in the open daylight, she held it without hesitation.
Rowan looked down at their joined hands, then at their children, then at the little pantry filling with people who had come not for charity but for dignity.
For years, he had believed legacy was built in boardrooms, engraved on buildings, preserved through silence.
