On the edge of the rug was a faded dark stain where my head had struck the floor.

And on the wall hung the same ornate family portrait that Amber had insisted I dust every single week, for ten years, while she treated me as the household servant who paid the mortgage.

I stood in that room, my body remembering everything my mind was trying to manage, and for a moment I could not move at all.

Then I went upstairs to the master bedroom, and I took a small wooden keepsake box from my closet, and inside it I found a letter my grandmother had written me years before.

I opened it, standing there in that terrible house, and I read the line that would become the compass for the rest of my life. Jade, it read, if you ever confuse sacrifice with love, remember that real love never asks you to erase yourself. I sat down on the edge of the bed and I wept — not the weeping of the woman I had been, but something cleaner, something closer to grief finally finding its proper shape.