And the gift of that hospital bed — the one thing I will grimly thank them for — is that the two texts were not ambiguous.

There was no room to doubt my own eyes. You deserved it. We’ve almost got the trust. For once the evidence was too plain to talk myself out of, and the woman who had spent five years shrinking stood up inside me and did not sit back down.

Chapter 7 — The Armor

I locked the phone screen.

The tears I had been holding back dried up, and something else settled over me in their place — a calm so complete it felt like a suit of armor closing around my bones.

I was not a grieving wife anymore.