My father pulled me into his arms.
I was no longer a wife abandoned in a mansion.
I was a daughter coming home.
“I thought you would hate me,” I whispered.
His hand rested gently on the back of my head.
“For marrying him?”
“For disappearing.”
He was quiet for a long time.
Then he said, “I hated every empty chair at my table. Never you.”
Something inside me broke then.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just enough for the tears to come.
The Vance estate stood beyond the eastern edge of the city, hidden behind iron gates and old maple trees. I had grown up there. I had run barefoot through its gardens. I had learned to ride horses in the back fields. I had buried my mother beneath the white magnolia tree near the lake.
When the car pulled through the gates, dawn had not yet come.
The house was lit from within.
