Some nights I cried over the mother I missed.

Some nights I called Silas and laughed for an hour.

I was allowed to contain all of those things.

It was not a transformation as dramatic as four SUVs.

It was a thousand small choices made after no one was watching.

They were harder to film, and they lasted longer.

PART 19

Silas and I returned to Asheville one year after the courthouse ceremony.