Another message arrived from Margaret.
Thank you for coming. Sophie would have been so happy to see her parents remembering her together.
I placed the phone down.
For a moment, I stood quietly in the sunlight.
I thought about the woman I’d been before Sophie died.
The woman who organized her entire life around making Dominic comfortable.
Who accepted every excuse.
Who sacrificed career opportunities.
Who waited for him to notice how much she was giving.
Then I thought about the woman who had boarded a plane to Toronto.
She was frightened.
Heartbroken.
Uncertain.
But she had made one decision that changed everything.
She would stop waiting for someone else to choose her.
I walked into my small painting studio.
On the easel stood an unfinished canvas.
A little girl in a yellow dress ran through a field of flowers.
