For twenty-four years the rule had been absolute: my mother watched from a distance, always, at every graduation and wedding and christening, because the distance was the safety, and to close it was to risk everything.

Clement had enforced that rule with a broken heart because breaking his heart was cheaper than breaking the fortress.

And now here I was, at his graveside, dismantling the one wall of it that no longer needed to stand — calling my mother out of the shadows he had exiled her to, into the daylight, to her rightful place at her daughter’s side.

It felt, oddly, like the truest way I could honor him.

Because the exile had never been what Clement wanted; it was only what safety required.

And safety no longer required it.