That was the moment she finally broke down and let out all the fear she had been carrying. She came home to live with us a few days later when she was discharged.
We didn’t have a perfect plan or a lot of money, but we had a roof and each other. No one in our house was ever going to have to face the world alone again.
We moved furniture around and we adjusted our schedules to make it work. It was a struggle, but we stayed exactly where we needed to be.
A year has passed since that night, and our small house is much louder and messier than before. It is also fuller and happier than I ever thought possible.
I still think about that graduation night and the woman who said Westley was just like his mother. I realize now that she was absolutely right about him.
He is just like me because he chose love when it would have been much easier to run away. He was terrified of the future, yet he chose to stay and fight for his family anyway.
Standing in that gym, I finally let go of the shame I had carried for nearly two decades. Our story didn’t belong to the people who judged us from the sidelines.