They were not.

What I got back was my future.

My past stayed spent.

And I have decided that a future is enough to build a life on, even when the past cannot be refunded — that you do not need the stolen years returned in order to make the remaining ones your own.

Chapter 19 — Presence, Not Presents

Three months later, the afternoon sun came through the windows of a home in the hills, and I stood in my own kitchen and watched my son play in a sunlit backyard with Mr.