“Where did we go wrong, Tom?” she asked one night, staring into the fireplace. “Did we give him too much? Did we not love him enough?”

“We loved him exactly right, Linda,” I said, squeezing her hand. “But you can pour the best water in the world into a cracked vase, and it will still bleed out into the dirt.

His choices are his own.”

To force a reset, I took her away. We drove up the coast and rented a small, isolated cabin overlooking the jagged ocean cliffs. No cell service. No smart locks.

Just the sound of the waves and the smell of salt and pine. For three weeks we didn’t speak Ethan’s name. We remembered how to be just Tom and Linda — the couple who’d built a life out of nothing but grit and a shared dream.

By the time we came home, the autumn rain had given way to a biting winter. The house felt different now. Not like a family estate waiting to be passed down, but like a fortress.