A deputy guided her gently toward a cruiser to take her statement.

I stood on the porch with Marisol. Red and blue washed over the black water of the lake.

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly.

I looked back at the glass all over my living room floor. There was a mess to clean up. There would be months of court dates and depositions and ugly family fallout.

But I pulled in a lungful of cold pine air, and my chest didn’t tighten. The weight that had been sitting on my lungs for eight years simply wasn’t there.

“Yes,” I said, and felt a small smile find the corners of my mouth. “I think I’m finally home.”