The morning air in the Colorado Rockies has a way of making you believe you’re starting over, even if you’re standing in the middle of a life you built from splinters. Sinatra was crooning softly from an old tabletop radio on my kitchen counter, and a mason jar of iced tea sweated beside it, dripping slow rings onto reclaimed wood. I was in the main hall of my retreat, arranging wildflowers in my favorite glass vase—the one with a hairline crack near the base that I kept telling myself I’d replace “someday.” Purple lupine, little white daisies, a handful of stubborn yellow blooms that refused to look delicate in any arrangement.
Sunlight poured through the tall windows and warmed the petals like a blessing. By the front door, a small US flag patch—left behind by a volunteer last Fourth of July—was pinned to the bulletin board, its frayed edges a quiet reminder: you can belong to something without being owned by it. I had finally learned how to be still.
Then I heard the low growl of an engine climbing the narrow mountain road, and my body remembered a different kind of weather. The sound cut through the calm like a warning siren you can’t unhear. No one was scheduled to arrive that day.
The women who lived here were all down in town for counseling sessions and errands. Tuesdays were usually my favorite—the retreat humming with life and purpose, but quiet enough for me to catch my breath between the stories that stitched us together. I’d been enjoying the rare silence that came when the world stepped back and let you exist without asking what you could do for it.
The engine grew louder. Through the window, I saw a sleek black SUV easing up near the front steps, paint polished like it had never touched a dirt road. A little American flag magnet clung to the tailgate, the kind you buy at a gas station on a road trip to prove you were patriotic and spontaneous, even if you were neither.
The sight of that car tightened something in my chest. I knew it. I hadn’t seen it in years, but my body remembered it anyway—the way it always arrived like a demand.
Doors slammed. Footsteps crossed gravel. One set slow and heavy, the other sharp and impatient.
I did not need to look to know who it was. Logan Harrington—my son. And Vanessa—his wife.
The doorbell chimed, soft and polite, the same sound that usually welcomed women who came here trembling, carrying nothing but fear and a phone with a dead battery. Today it announced the two people who had caused me the deepest wounds and then acted offended when I asked them to acknowledge the bruise. I set the vase down carefully, like it might shatter if I moved too fast.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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