Chapter 15
The next three years passed in a happy blur.
Lily turned eleven.
She was in sixth grade now.
Tall and confident.
Smart and funny.
She still played soccer.
She still got straight A’s.
She still protected her little sister.
But now she was into boys and makeup and pop music.
She rolled her eyes at us sometimes.
Said we were “so embarrassing.”
But she still climbed into our bed when she had a bad dream.
Still held my hand when we crossed the street.
Still said “I love you” every night before bed.
Grace turned ten.
She was in fourth grade.
Quiet but fierce.
She loved to read.
Loved to draw.
Loved animals.
She wanted to be a vet when she grew up.
The nightmares were gone.
The flinching was gone.
She was happy.
Confident.
Loved.
She still slept with the ragged unicorn Lily had given her.
It was falling apart now.
We’d tried to replace it a dozen times.
But she wouldn’t hear of it.
“That unicorn found me,” she’d say. “It’s magic. I’ll never get rid of it.”
James’ construction company was thriving.
He’d built over fifty homes for low-income families.
He’d started a foundation to help single mothers buy their first homes.
He was named Citizen of the Year by the local chamber of commerce.
When he gave his acceptance speech, he talked about Margaret.
Not with hate.
But with sadness.
“My mother taught me what not to be,” he said. “She taught me that money and power mean nothing without love. That legacy isn’t about what you build. It’s about who you lift up. I try every day to be the opposite of her. To be kind. To be generous. To put my family first. I hope I’m succeeding.”
The whole room stood up and cheered.
My book had become a bestseller.
It was translated into twenty languages.
It was made into a movie.
I didn’t care about the money or the fame.
I cared about the letters.
The thousands of letters from people all over the world.
Telling me their stories.
Telling me how my book had given them hope.
How it had helped them find their missing children.
How it had helped them heal.
I started a foundation with the money from the book.
The Daniel Carter Foundation.
Named for our son.
We helped find missing children.
We paid for therapy for kids who’d been through trauma.
We built safe houses for kids who had nowhere else to go.
We’d helped find over a hundred missing children in three years.
A hundred families reunited.
A hundred children brought home.
It was the most important work I’d ever done.
Clara was eighty now.
Slower.
A little more forgetful.
But still sharp as a tack.
Still the best grandma in the world.
She lived with us now.
We’d added a suite onto the house for her.
She spent her days baking cookies with the girls.
Reading to them.
Telling them stories about when James was a little boy.
Stories about Margaret, too.
Not the cruel stories.
The ones from before.
When Margaret was young.
Before the money and the power and the cruelty had eaten her alive.
“Your grandma wasn’t always bad,” she’d tell the girls. “She was a little girl once, just like you. She was hurt a lot when she was young. That doesn’t excuse what she did. Nothing excuses that. But it explains it a little. Hate is a disease, girls. It eats you up from the inside out. Don’t ever let it take root in your hearts. Forgive. Move on. Be happy. That’s the best thing you can do.”
The girls listened.
They were kind.
Generous.
Loving.
They had no hate in their hearts.
Not even for Margaret.
She was just a story to them now.
A sad story about a woman who’d made all the wrong choices.
Darlene was still family.
She came to every holiday.
Every birthday.
Every soccer game.
She’d met a nice man.
A widower who owned a farm outside of town.
They got married last spring.
We were all there.
Grace was the maid of honor.
Sarah Henderson was the matron of honor.
It was a beautiful day.
Detective Rao had retired.
He and his wife moved into a small house five minutes away.
He spent his days fishing and teaching the girls how to ride horses.
His wife taught them how to cook.
They were family.
All of them.
The people who’d stood by us.
Who’d loved us.
Who’d helped us heal.
We weren’t just a family of four anymore.
We were a tribe.
A big, loud, loving tribe.
And we were happy.
So, so happy.
But life, I’d learned, is never perfect.
May you like
Just when you think everything is going great, something happens to remind you how fragile it all is.
That fall, Clara got sick.
