They are what a person’s choices turn into, when the person has finally run out of houses to hide them in.

Ethan had made his choices freely, in arrogance and comfort, certain there would never be a bill.

The bill had come.

I was not the one presenting it.

I had only removed the shelter he had been hiding from it under, and let it find him, the way it always eventually finds everyone, in the end.

Chapter 19 — The Aftermath

Three months later, my daughter and I were living in the bright townhouse, with its soft wooden floors, its white curtains, and a peaceful nursery with a door that locked only from the inside, that no one in the world could ever lock us out of.