Both adults stood at the same moment.

They followed him to a patch of grass where Eli had discovered an unusually large beetle.

Naomi bent to identify it; Preston held the boys’ water bottles and listened.

It was a small scene, hardly the stuff of the glamorous headlines that had followed Preston for years.

But it contained something they had never had during their marriage: two adults making room for the same ordinary moment without trying to own it.

PART 18: A Letter for the Future