I didn’t take a dime of the Ashford money. I didn’t want it. The settlement from the divorce, granted swiftly and entirely in my favor by a judge who had zero patience for Daniel’s legal team, was more than enough.
I bought a small, beautiful house on the coast of Maine. It wasn’t a mansion, but it had a wrap-around porch, a sprawling garden, and massive windows that filled the rooms with brilliant, golden morning light.
On quiet afternoons, I would sit in an old wooden rocking chair on the porch, rocking Elias to sleep while the ocean waves folded gently against the rocky shore. The air smelled of salt and pine trees, clean and untainted by the toxic perfume of the life I had left behind.
Every now and then, an ambitious freelance reporter would track me down. They would stand at the end of my driveway, notebooks in hand, and ask me if the elaborate revenge had actually given me peace. They wanted a soundbite about the hollow nature of vengeance.
I always looked down at Elias, safely asleep against my chest, and I always told them the exact same truth.
Revenge did not give me peace. Revenge was violent, and exhausting, and terrifying.
Revenge merely kicked open the heavy, locked door that had been trapping me in the dark.
Peace was the simple, profound act of walking through that open door, stepping into the sunlight, and finally breathing free with my son in my arms.
