He was the other party to a custody arrangement.

Nothing more.

All communications through my legal representation.

It was not a wound speaking.

It was a woman who had finally, completely, and permanently let go.

Chapter 19 — True Strength

That afternoon, after my mother had gone and Maya had fallen fast asleep in her crib, I carried a book and a cold glass of iced tea out onto the back patio, and I sat beneath a sky that was a brilliant, endless, cloudless blue.

And I thought, as I sometimes let myself do now, about the two years I had spent before that forgotten phone call.