“Still fine.”
“I started therapy. The shelter helped me change my name legally. I moved twice.”
“Fine.”
“Then Tyler was arrested.”
I stopped.
“For what?”
“Assaulting another woman.”
“When?”
“About eighteen months after the fire.”
“So after that?”
Rebecca looked down.
“After that, fear wasn’t the whole reason anymore.”
There it was.
The thing I’d driven ninety minutes to hear.
The unforgivable part.
She had eventually become safe enough to return.
And hadn’t.
Rebecca didn’t have amnesia.
She hadn’t spent twelve years confused about her identity.
That would have been easier for me.
Instead, she had spent twelve years living with a choice that became harder to reverse every time another month passed.
She moved to Ohio.
She trained as a veterinary technician.
She married a woman named Hannah at thirty-one.
They divorced amicably three years later.
She volunteered at an animal rescue.
She ran half-marathons.
