What I know is that the choice is mine now, fully mine, for the first time in my life — that I am no longer the girl who must fix whatever is broken, answer whatever rings, carry whatever is set on her back.

I kept the letter because it was true.

Whether I ever answer it is a decision I get to make slowly, on my own time, owing no one, from inside a life that is finally, entirely, my own.

That weekend, Lennox and I drove two hours down the highway to St.

Jude Chapel.

It was a Tuesday, empty, the doors unlocked.