One hundred seventy-four payments had once connected me to my family.
But in the end, none of those receipts had bought what I was really after.
Peace arrived only when I stopped paying for my place and claimed it instead.
At seventy-seven, under a Tuscan sky James would have loved, I finally understood something that would have saved me years if I had learned it sooner:
Love given freely is a gift.
Love demanded through guilt is a debt.
And I was done living in debt.
I picked up my wine, looked out over the darkening vineyards, and felt the simplest, rarest thing of all settle gently inside me.
My life was finally my own.
