He took one look at her and smiled. “You look rested.”
“I slept six hours last night,” she told him.
He chuckled. “That’s a real luxury.”
“I don’t know how to thank you,” she said.
Arthur shook his head and looked toward the boys.
“You already have.”
A month later, Emily boarded a train to a quiet resort two hours away. Arthur had insisted she take a weekend for herself while the nurses stayed with the boys. She had almost argued. Then she hadn’t.
As the train pulled away from the station, she leaned back and closed her eyes.
Outside the window, the evening light stretched long and golden across the landscape.
For the first time in three years, she felt something she had almost forgotten the feeling of.
Peace.
Not the peace of someone who had given up. The peace of someone who had come through the hardest stretch of her life and discovered, on the other side, that she was still standing.
That her sons were still growing.
That the people who truly loved them had shown up when it mattered most.
And that tomorrow, whatever it looked like, was genuinely worth looking forward to.
Leave a Comment