Wanda half-hoped for it.
But I found I didn’t want to burn the Ashcrofts down.
I only wanted to stop being the thing they burned.
There’s a difference, and it took me a while to feel it in my body rather than just understand it in my head.
Revenge would have kept me tied to them — checking whether they were suffering enough, measuring my healing against their misery, letting them live rent-free in a mind I’d finally gotten back.
Freedom was quieter and far more complete: it was simply removing myself, my money, and my labor, and letting the natural consequences arrive on their own schedule, without me standing guard to enjoy them.
The kindest thing I ever did for myself was to stop watching that house at all.
Chapter 18 — New Soil
Six months later, I signed a lease on a small, sunlit storefront in a quiet Columbus neighborhood, where the baker waved to me in the mornings and schoolkids streamed past the glass in the afternoons.
I opened a professional organizing and life-management studio.