Chapter 5: The New Beginning
Six months later the house felt like ours.
Felix had his own room filled with the toys and books I could now buy without sending the money away. My parents had a small garden in the backyard where my father spent his mornings. I had taken a local job that let me be home every evening for dinner.
Russell tried to fight for visitation at first. The court granted supervised visits after reviewing the full record. He showed up for the first few, then stopped coming. The last time I saw him, he looked at Felix with the same distant expression he had given me in the kitchen the morning I told him I was pregnant.
He never apologized.
I never needed him to.
One evening Felix climbed into my lap on the porch and asked the question I had been waiting for.
“Mommy, why did Daddy leave?”
I held him close and told him the truth in the simplest words I could find.
“Daddy made choices that hurt our family. But those choices don’t change how much I love you. Or how much Nana and Papa love you. We’re together now, and that’s what matters.”
He nodded and rested his head on my shoulder.
“I like it here with you.”
I kissed the top of his head and watched the fireflies come out in the backyard I had paid for with five years of my life.
The money, the house, the years away—they had all been worth it the moment I saw my son and my parents safe under one roof that no one could take from us again.
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I had left Tampa thinking I was coming home to my family.
I had come home to build one that could never be broken by a man who smiled while he took everything I had sent.
