By the end of the first week, the walls no longer felt like strangers. They felt like they were exhaling, finally allowed to tell the truth again.
Out in the garden, I knelt beside the roses.
Some had been damaged but not fatally. I carefully tamped the soil down around their roots, whispering apologies to them like they were old friends who’d been startled awake. A few bushes were beyond saving—roots hacked too deeply, stems broken at the base. Those I trimmed gently and laid aside. I’d plant new ones in their place.
As I worked, the sound of the ocean kept me company, its rhythm a constant, steady heartbeat underneath the shifting details of my life.
It didn’t take long for the next wave of attack to arrive.
Victoria’s lawyer began sending letters—a cascade of accusations, demands, and veiled threats. They claimed emotional harm, unfair manipulation, improper influence over my mother, hidden documents.Each envelope stirred a familiar tightness in my chest.
Each time, I forwarded them to Margaret.
She handled them with that same professional precision I’d seen so many years ago at Mom’s bedside.