She did not tear it up. She did not send an angry reply. She did not allow it to determine the course of her day.
Forgiveness, she had learned, was not the same as pretending nothing had happened. And reconciliation was not an obligation she owed someone simply because they shared a family history.
Perhaps one day she would feel differently.
For now, distance was the boundary that allowed her to heal.
That evening, she joined Matthew for dinner.
He noticed that she was unusually quiet.
“Everything all right?”
Elena nodded.
“I received a letter from Isabel.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not tonight.”
“Then we won’t.”
He reached across the table and took her hand.
She smiled.
It was such a small thing, that freedom to postpone a conversation without being punished for it.
Yet it reminded her how far she had come.
The young woman who had run barefoot through a storm, terrified of being dragged back into a life she had never chosen, was gone.
