Sometimes it comes from the moment you understand that the person hurting you no longer qualifies as a safe place, no matter what name they call you by.
Sometimes it comes from paperwork.
Sometimes from preparation.
Sometimes from a banker who says, I’m very sorry this is happening, and means it.
Sometimes from a dead husband who loved you enough to think ahead.
Sometimes from a granddaughter old enough to ask the right question.
Sometimes from standing in a grocery store parking lot with flowers you did not get to buy and deciding, without yet knowing how, that this will not be how your story ends.
Desmond thought freezing my cards would make me small.
Instead, it reminded me exactly how large a life Warren and I had built, and exactly how fiercely I was still capable of defending it.
The cards failed that day.
I did not.
And in the final accounting, that made all the difference.
THE END
