I did not win a fortune in that divorce.

I simply took back what had been mine all along, and set down, at last, the lie that it wasn’t.

Chapter 20 — A New Coat

A year later, the morning sun came across the patio of a home that was entirely my own, and the air was sweet with the smell of blooming flowers and fresh coffee, and I stood in it and let myself, for a moment, simply be alive.

Out on the green lawn, my daughter was running, shrieking with laughter, chasing a clumsy new puppy in circles.

She was wearing a raincoat — a brand-new one, bright yellow, that I had bought her in a different town, with no ducks on it and no memory in it, a coat that had never been near any of what had happened and never would be.