Chapter 7 - A New Foundation
Two Years Later
The Nashville sun was shining brightly as the smell of barbecue filled the air.
I stood by the grill in the backyard of our new home—a beautiful, sprawling property we had purchased after selling the old house. The old house held too many bad memories, so we had liquidated it and started entirely fresh.
“Incoming!” a tiny voice shrieked.
I laughed and caught a plastic football before it hit the grill. Frederick, now a healthy, robust, and wildly energetic three-year-old, came barreling across the fresh green grass, tackling my legs.
“Gotcha, Daddy!” he giggled.
“You sure did, buddy,” I smiled, scooping him up and tossing him into the air.
I looked across the patio. Amy was sitting at the outdoor dining table, laughing with her sister and a few close friends. She looked absolutely radiant. Following the nightmare with my family, Amy had gone back to school online and was now running her own highly successful interior design consulting firm. She was independent, confident, and fearless.
She caught me staring and walked over, wrapping her arms around my waist as I set Frederick down to run back to his toys.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked, resting her head against my shoulder.
“Just thinking about how lucky I am,” I replied, kissing the top of her head.
We didn't talk about my mother anymore. She was a ghost, serving out her sentence in a concrete cell miles away, completely cut off from our world. We didn't talk about Mason or Betsy. They were the past, buried under the beautiful life we had built together.
I pulled a small, velvet box from my pocket.
Amy gasped as I opened it. Inside was a stunning, custom-designed sapphire ring.
“Connor, what is this?” she whispered, her eyes filling with happy tears.
“It’s a promise,” I said, slipping it onto her finger. “A promise that in this house, the only rule is that we protect each other. Always.”
She smiled, wiping a tear from her cheek, and pulled me in for a deep, lingering kiss.
May you like
The music played, our friends laughed, and our son chased butterflies across the yard. We had walked through hell to get here, but looking around at our perfect, peaceful life, I knew one thing for certain.
We had won.
