Standing on that porch, cast out and alone, she could not have imagined any of it.

But that is the thing I have learned, more than any other, from the strange and difficult shape of my life: that the worst night you have ever lived through is not always the end of the story.

Sometimes it is only the beginning of a longer and better one, that you cannot see yet from where you are standing, in the dark, on the porch, with everything you love behind a screen door you are certain will never open again.

Sometimes the door opens.

Sometimes you carry the truth home.

And sometimes, ten years later, you get everything back, and more than you lost.