with me or the children absent future court approval. Pauline received a shorter sentence on the accomplice charges, along with mandatory counseling.
I moved with the three girls into a small rental house across town, close enough to Michelle that she could help with school pickups on the days I picked up extra shifts at the accounting firm where I’d finally, cautiously, returned to work part-time. It wasn’t the life I’d imagined when Grady and I first married, full of hope for a family that would look nothing like the one I eventually had to escape from. But it was, unmistakably, ours—steady, quiet, and entirely free of porch mornings and rehearsed excuses.
Hazel and Wren both started seeing a child therapist who specializes in family trauma, and according to her careful updates, both girls have shown genuine resilience, though Hazel in particular still sometimes flinches at raised voices in ways
