The deck—where Jessica had once typed can already taste the margaritas—had become the center of my mornings. Coffee in hand, wrapped in a faded sweatshirt, I would sit and watch the horizon shift from violet to gold while the ocean breathed below.

One morning, an envelope arrived from the National Marine Conservation Foundation. I opened it expecting a routine newsletter and found instead a letter printed on heavy paper, my name typed neatly across the top.

They were establishing a fellowship in my name.

The Mara Chin Fellowship for Emerging Coastal Researchers.

One hundred thousand dollars annually to support promising fieldwork and research projects.

I sat there for a long time with the letter in my lap. Then I read the accompanying press release and laughed softly when I reached the line describing my home—my “controversial beach property,” as my mother had once sneered at it—as a model for integrated living and research spaces, demonstrating the symbiosis of personal residence and field station.

I smiled at that.

I did not forward the letter to my family.

Trevor still calls sometimes. Our conversations are careful, like crossing a river on stepping stones—deliberate, cautious, aware of what happens if you put your weight in the wrong place.

Once, he asked how I had known to save everything. The screenshots. The messages. The records.

“I don’t think I knew consciously,” I told him. “I just stopped trusting their version of events a long time ago. Their story about me never matched my reality. Saving things was my way of proving to myself that I wasn’t crazy. That I wasn’t misunderstanding what was actually happening.”

He was quiet for a while.

“Do you still look at the ledger?” he asked eventually.

“No,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t need to keep counting what was taken,” I told him. “I’m too busy keeping track of what I’m building.”

He didn’t answer right away. When he finally did, his voice was softer.