Outside, Charleston was bright after an early rain.
She walked toward her car with the packet under one arm and stopped before opening the door.
For years she had imagined motherhood as a single road with a single ending.
Travis and Patricia had used that dream against her until she believed losing the road meant losing herself.
Now she understood that the future did not owe her a replacement for everything she had lost.
It only had to belong to her again.
She placed the records on the passenger seat.
The navy folder that had once contained every piece of evidence was there too, thinner now.
Lauren closed the car door and looked at it through the window.
The folder had begun as proof that someone had taken a decision away from her.
It ended as proof that she had taken her voice back.
Then she turned from the clinic, lifted her face into the clearing light, and walked forward without asking anyone’s permission.
