The plastic bags are gone.

The silence is broken.

Now, when my wife comes home, she walks in through the front door, exactly as she is — tired sometimes, healing still, and entirely loved.

And my son, who saw what I could not, gets to grow up knowing the truest thing either of us could teach him: that you don’t have to be fine to be loved, and you never have to carry the hard things alone.

THE END.