Pure, settled, unshakeable peace.

I stood in that clean quiet living room for a long time before I left to get her, longer than I needed to, and I let myself simply feel the silence of it.

For six years I had known silence of a different kind, the silence of an apartment eight thousand miles from everyone I loved, the silence that is really just distance, just absence, just the ache of a life lived far from home in order to build a home for someone else.

I had made peace with that silence, or told myself I had.