“You are our entire world,” Claire wept, her arms locked fiercely around my neck.
June, the fortress, simply pressed her forehead against my chest, her tears soaking through the thin fabric of my shirt. “We know what it cost you,” she whispered fiercely. “We know everything.”
I wrapped my long, scarred arms around the three of them and pulled them hard against my chest. The grinding exhaustion of the past twenty-two years—the double shifts, the missed vacations, the terrifying midnight fevers, and the choking loneliness—vanished at once and for good. It burned away under the sheer size of their love.
Elias was a coward. He was a thief who stole my youth in the dark. But as I held the three most magnificent, brilliant women on the planet and listened to the roaring auditorium celebrate our survival, I understood that Elias had, without meaning to, given me the greatest treasure the universe held.
It has been several months since the auditorium at Wellington University shattered.
The girls have moved successfully into their own cities and begun demanding, brilliant careers. The drafty apartment above the hardware store is remarkably, deeply quiet. The chaotic collision of three distinct, volatile personalities no longer shakes the floorboards.
But the silence is no longer a threatening, frightening thing. It is deeply, beautifully peaceful.
My knee still throbs when winter frost settles in, and my hair remains a stark, unyielding gray. But my bank account is no longer hovering at three hundred dollars, and more importantly, my soul is entirely unburdened.
I did not sacrifice my life for three abandoned infants. I invested my existence into building an impenetrable, fiercely loyal empire. The blood running through our veins may be shared with a ghost who fled in the night, but the foundation we constructed is anchored entirely in truth, sweat, and absolute grace.
The lineage is no longer broken. It is officially, beautifully unbreakable.
