Epilogue
Mara
Vermont is very different. The road behind us winds through pine trees and old barns and patches of snow melting into soft mud.
The road behind us winds through pine trees heavy with memory. Old barns lean like they’re tired of waiting for someone to come home. The patches of snow melt into soft, reluctant mud, making everything feel like it’s thawing—aching toward spring, but not there yet.
Ahead of me sits a house that’s not quite falling apart, but not quite whole either.
Green shutters, sagging porch, a crooked wooden sign that reads:
Timber Valley Animal Rescue
Private Property – Appointments Only
This is it.
He lives here.
Thomas Walls.
My father.
The man I’ve built up and torn down in my head a thousand times.
The man who never came.
The man who—some part of me still aches to believe—didn’t know.
My fingers clench around the door handle, bloodless and trembling. I stare through the windshield like it might give me more time, but it doesn’t. All it gives me is the ache of everything I’ve carried up this mountain.
Alec’s voice breaks softly through the thick, fragile silence. “You sure you don’t want me to come up with you?”
No. Yes. Maybe.
I want to hide behind his warmth. I want to crawl into his lap and pretend I don’t need this moment as badly as I do.
“I’m sure,” I say, voice small. “If he slams the door in my face, that’ll be easier without an audience.”
Alec doesn’t argue. He just gives me that look—the one that strips away all my armor. The one that sees straight through to the small, scared girl still sitting inside me.
“He won’t slam the door,” he says.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know his daughter,” he replies quietly. “And if she had been mine, I wouldn’t slam the door.”
That does me in. My throat closes around the lump rising too fast to swallow.
In the back seat, Mila hugs her stuffed frog to her chest. Her big eyes find mine, full of worry and something else—faith.
“Do you want me to come?” she whispers.
My heart cracks down the middle. “Not this time, sweet girl. I’ll call for you when I’m ready.”
She nods, as if that’s enough. As if she knows I’ll come back changed. “I’ll save you a gummy bear.”
A laugh hiccups out of me, watery and fragile. “Good. I might need ten.”
Then I open the door before I can talk myself out of it.
The air hits me like ice. It feels Stephen King-creepy, but I ring the doorbell.
Silence.
Then footsteps.
And then the door opens, and he’s there.
Thomas Walls looks like time hasn’t just passed—it’s lived in him. His flannel shirt is worn, sleeves pushed up over forearms that look like they’ve built things, carried things, and maybe broken a few too. His eyes—brown like mine—go wide. The kind of wide that says this isn’t real.
His face goes pale. His hand drops from the doorframe. His mouth parts, but no words come right away. Just a raw, ragged silence that settles between us like a ghost.
“You . . .” His voice breaks. He tries again. “You look just like her. Like my Lina.”
My knees go soft.
That name—Lina.
The girl he loved.
The woman who died with secrets in her heart and a letter in her drawer.
“I—yeah,” I whisper. “I know. I look like her.”
He stares at me like I’m something holy and terrible. Like I’m a miracle and a reckoning all at once.
Like he’s seeing a life he thought he’d never touch again.
“She sent me a letter,” he says, voice hoarse. “About a year ago. Told me about you. About her life. Said she might not make it. Said if you ever came . . .” He stops, blinks hard. “I didn’t think she would. I didn’t think you were real.”
I want to be strong, to stand tall, to meet this moment like the adult I am.
But all I feel is like a little girl in a too-big world, finally meeting the man who wasn’t there on her birthdays.
The man who missed her first steps, her scraped knees, the concerts and heartbreaks and late-night fevers.
The man who missed me because he was a prisoner.
“I’m Mara,” I say, tears flooding my eyes, falling freely now. “I’m . . . I’m your daughter.”
He stumbles, literally stumbles backward, one hand catching the edge of a small table. His knees buckle, and for a terrifying second, I think he might collapse.
But then he steadies, drags in a breath like it’s the first one he’s taken in years, and lifts his eyes back to mine. There’s no rejection there, just grief.
And wonder.
“It seems like I missed everything,” he whispers, his voice wrecked. “But I don’t want to miss anything else. Please. Come in. I’ve got tea. Coffee. And all the time in the world to learn about you.”
My feet move before I can think.
And the second I cross that threshold—into this warm, creaky house that smells like cedar and hay and something like hope—something inside me breaks.
Not in a bad way.
But in the way, old pain finally lets go.
In the way forgotten children finally get found.
She’s not here.
Lina is gone.
But she left this.
She left him.
She left a door for me to knock on and a man who opened it.
And maybe—just maybe—this is the beginning of something that doesn’t hurt to hold.