14. Amanda
— ? —
Amanda
The cemetery is quiet.
November again. Almost exactly two years since the night that changed everything. The trees are bare, the sky is gray, and my mother’s headstone looks smaller than I remember.
Eleanor Reyes. 1965–2024. Beloved Mother.
I stand in front of it for a long time.
“Hi, Mom.”
My voice sounds strange in the silence. Too loud. Too alive.
“I know you can’t hear me. I know this is just a piece of stone and some bones in the ground and whatever story I tell myself to get through the day.” I crouch down. Brush some leaves off the base of the headstone. “But I needed to come. I needed to say some things. Even if you’re not listening.”
The wind picks up. Cold against my cheeks.
“I didn’t do it.” The words come out steady. Certain. “I know you died thinking I was a monster. I know you couldn’t even look at me in that courtroom. But I didn’t kill that man, Mom. I was framed. By Julian. By Vivienne. By everyone who was supposed to love me.”
Silence. Of course.
“I spent two years in prison for something I didn’t do.
Two years of concrete walls and fluorescent lights and nightmares that still won’t stop.
Two years of waiting for you to visit, to call, to send a letter - anything that said you still believed in me.
” My voice cracks. “You never did. And then you died, and I couldn’t even go to your funeral, and I-”
I stop. Breathe.
“I was so angry at you. For giving up on me. For believing them instead of me. For dying without ever knowing the truth.” I wipe my eyes.
“But I’m not angry anymore. I’m just sad.
Sad that you never got to see me walk out of that prison.
Sad that you’ll never know your name has been cleared.
Sad that I’ll never get to hear you say you’re proud of me. ”
The wind dies down. The cemetery is still.
“I forgive you, Mom. For not believing me. You were sick and scared and surrounded by people who lied to you. You did the best you could with what you knew.” I press my hand against the cold stone.
“And I forgive myself. For not being able to prove my innocence in time. For not being the perfect daughter you wanted. For surviving when part of me wanted to give up.”
I close my eyes.
“I’m okay now. Or I’m going to be. I have someone who loves me - really loves me, not the way Julian pretended to. I’m building a life that has nothing to do with the past. And I’m trying to be the kind of person you always told me I could be.” I open my eyes. “I just wish you could see it.”
I stand up. My knees ache from the cold ground.
“Goodbye, Mom. I love you. I always will.”
I turn and walk away.
I don’t look back.
***
Roman is waiting by the truck.
He doesn’t ask how it went. He just opens his arms, and I walk into them, and we stand there in the cemetery parking lot while I let go of something I’ve been carrying for two years.
“Ready?” he asks finally.
“Almost.” I pull back. Look at him. “There’s one more thing I need to do.”
***
Vivienne’s apartment looks different in the daylight.
Still small. Still shabby. But there are curtains in the windows now, and a welcome mat by the door, and the sounds of a child’s laughter drifting through the thin walls.
I knock.
The door opens.
Vivienne looks different too. Healthier. Her hair is shorter, her eyes are clearer, and she’s holding Thomas on her hip - a dark-haired toddler who looks at me with his father’s eyes and his mother’s smile.
“Amanda.” She sounds surprised. “I didn’t think you’d actually come.”
“Neither did I.”
We stare at each other for a long moment.
“Do you want to come in?”
I nod.
The apartment is cleaner than before. Toys organized in bins. Books on the shelves. A high chair at the tiny kitchen table.
“He’s gotten so big,” I say, looking at Thomas.
“They do that.” Vivienne sets him down in his playpen. “Every day it’s something new. Walking everywhere now. Trying to climb everything.”
I watch my nephew toddle toward a stuffed elephant. Grab it. Hug it with clumsy arms.
He’s innocent.
Whatever his parents did, he had no part in it.
“Vivienne.” I turn to face her. “I’m not here to be your friend. I’m not here to pretend everything is okay between us. What you did - what you let happen - I may never be able to forgive that.”
She flinches. “I know.”
“But.” I take a breath. “He’s my nephew. And he didn’t choose his parents. And I don’t want him to grow up without knowing that someone in his family isn’t broken.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I want to be part of his life. Not yours - his. If that’s something you can live with.”
Vivienne’s eyes fill with tears.
“I can live with that.”
“Good.” I look back at Thomas. “Can I-”
“Yes. Of course.”
I crouch down beside the playpen. Thomas looks up at me with curious eyes.
“Hi,” I say softly. “I’m your Aunt Amanda.”
He holds out the elephant.
I take it. And something in my chest - something hard and cold and locked tight for two years - starts to thaw.
***
The drive back to the cabin is quiet.
Not uncomfortable quiet. Thoughtful quiet. The kind that comes after something big has shifted inside you.
“You did good today,” Roman says.
“I don’t know if I did good. I just did what I needed to do.”
“Sometimes that’s the same thing.”
He reaches over. Takes my hand.
***
The cabin glows in the evening light.
We’ve been here for over a month now - long enough that it’s started to feel like home. Roman has planted things in the garden. I’ve hung curtains in the windows. Small changes that add up to something bigger.
A life. Built from scratch.
“Come outside,” Roman says as we pull up. “There’s something I want to show you.”
***
The garden is beautiful in the sunset.
Roman’s been working on it for weeks - clearing the old beds, planting bulbs that will bloom in the spring, building a small arbor out of reclaimed wood. I’ve watched him from the window, marveling at the patience of it, the hope.
He leads me to the center of the garden. Stops under the arbor.
“Amanda.”
His voice is different. Soft. A little nervous.
“Roman, what-”
He drops to one knee.
My heart stops.
“I’ve loved you for five years,” he says. “Through all of it - the wedding that wasn’t mine, the marriage that destroyed you, the prison that tried to break you, the war that brought you back. I’ve loved you through every version of yourself, and I’ll love you through whatever versions come next.”
He reaches into his pocket. Pulls out a ring.
It’s simple. Beautiful. An antique setting with a modest diamond that catches the fading light.
“This was my grandmother’s,” he says. “The only thing from my family that isn’t tainted by the Vance name.
I’ve been carrying it for years, waiting for the right moment, the right person.
” His eyes meet mine. “Barefoot. Two in the morning. The seating chart. That was the moment I knew. You were laughing at something - I still don’t know what - and I thought: there she is. The one I’ve been waiting for.”
Tears are streaming down my face.
“Amanda Reyes.” He holds up the ring. “Will you marry me?”
I look at him - this man who held me in cold showers and visited me every week and fought a war he didn’t have to fight. This man who saw me at my worst and loved me anyway. This man who waited five years for a moment that might never come.
“Yes.”
The word falls out of me like breathing.
“Yes?” His voice cracks.
“Yes. A thousand times yes.” I pull him to his feet. Take his face in my hands. “But we don’t get married in a church. We don’t get married in a ballroom. We don’t do any of the things Julian would have wanted.”
“Where, then?”
I look around at the garden. The arbor. The cabin that’s become our refuge.
“Here,” I say. “We get married here. Where everything’s new.”
He kisses me.
And for the first time since I walked out of prison, I feel something other than empty.
I feel whole.