So I believed them first.
One winter afternoon, a letter arrived from Madison. The return address was a correctional facility. She wrote about regret, loneliness, and forgiveness. She called me her sister as if that word had ever meant protection.
I fed the letter into the shredder and watched it disappear in thin white strips…
Epilogue: Forged, Not Buried
That evening, I stood by the window of my office while the city glittered below me. For a long moment, I studied my reflection in the glass.
The scar on my cheek was still there. It always would be.
But it no longer looked like a wound.
It looked like a seam, something that had held me together after the world tried to split me apart. My family had believed they could shame me into silence, frighten me into obedience, and break me into someone small enough to control.
They failed.
I was no longer the girl at the end of the table, swallowing warnings because no one wanted to hear them. I was the woman who spoke for those still trapped in rooms where cruelty wore a familiar face.
They tried to bury me beneath fear, pain, and silence.
