We failed her not through malice but through absence, through a feud that made a frightened woman believe her own family was a danger rather than a refuge.

I cannot fix that.

Arthur cannot fix that.

All we can do is make certain, with everything we have, that the child she was so afraid for grows up drowning in exactly the belonging her mother died without.

It is not enough.

It is a debt we can never fully pay.

But it is what we have, and we pay on it every single day.

Chapter 26 — No More Missing Pieces