Three.
By twenty, tears were running down my face.
By fifty, I was laughing at myself for crying.
And by one hundred, I was simply breathing.
My hair fell smoothly down my back.
When I looked toward the doorway, Dad was standing there holding two cups of coffee.
I didn’t know how long he’d been watching.
“She’d be proud of you,” he said.
I smiled through my tears.
“For brushing my hair?”
He handed me a cup.
“For finishing all one hundred strokes. She always said you’d stop at thirty.”
I laughed.
We sat together on the couch.
The afternoon sunlight caught the mirror and cast a small rainbow across the living room wall.
Right across the spot where Brian had punched one of the holes.
For eight months, I’d believed winning meant keeping the house.
Or receiving a fair settlement.
Or finally convincing the judge that Brian wasn’t the reasonable man he pretended to be.
And yes, those things mattered.
