That wasn’t my sentence to carry anymore.

I walked out through the glass doors, into the light, toward my girls.

Chapter 16 — The Golden State

Two years later, the sun comes up over the Pacific and lays itself across our terrace in Santa Barbara like something poured, and the morning smells of salt and eucalyptus and the coffee going in the kitchen.

Down on the grass, Poppy and Wren are arguing cheerfully over a volleyball net that will not stay up.

Willa — seventeen now, and headed to UCLA in the fall — sits at the patio table with her laptop open to an orientation portal, chewing a pen, already half gone into the enormous bright future she earned.