My win did not feel precarious.

It felt like ground under my feet for the first time in ten years.

You do not gloat over solid ground.

You just stand on it.

He looked down at his hands.

“I miss Tommy.” “Then do the hard, slow work of becoming a father he can trust again.

There’s no shortcut, and I can’t give it to you, and neither can a lawyer.” He was quiet, and then he said my name, the way he used to, and asked, “Will you ever forgive me, Bella?” And I thought about the ballroom, and the red dress, and Eleanor’s hand coming to rest on a stranger’s child, and my ten-year-old son holding a microphone when he should have been eating cake with his cousins.

“Maybe someday it won’t hurt anymore,” I said.