Page 140 of The Long Way Home
I was so certain I had lost her. That girl I used to be. The one who trusted her own momentum, who believed the world would bend because it always had before. I told myself she vanished somewhere between grief and growing up, between the day everything shattered and the years I spent carefully assembling a smaller life from the pieces that remained.
After Josh died, I learned how to make myself manageable. I learned when to soften, when to disappear, when to be agreeable instead of alive. I mistook restraint for strength and survival for wisdom. And when I looked in the mirror, I told myself that caution was maturity, that dulling my edges was the price of staying intact.
But sitting here now, with the lake breathing beneath the sun and the dock warm under my palms, I understand how wrong I was.
She was never gone.
She was waiting for permission to exist again.
The girl Josh believed in. The one who trusted her own fire. She didn’t die with him. She endured.
And now, finally, I am choosing her.
I am taking back what was always mine.
Chapter Thirty-one
RHETT
People speak of moments that alter the trajectory of a life. Those seismic instants that leave indelible marks, etched so deeply you can summon them at will, even decades later, as if they were yesterday. Yet what most overlook, what slips beneath the surface of their memory, are the fragments. The granular, almost invisible moments, that quietly gather momentum, nudging you toward those life-altering events.
“Wes, I still can’t get over the fact that you thought that stick in the water was a snake,” Lexi says, grinning into her wine glass.
“I still say it looked like a snake.”
“You screamed like someone was pulling you under,” Slone says, snorting.
“Yeah, because I didn’t sign up to be in a live-action National Geographic episode,” he shoots back.
Anderson leans forward with a grin. “Okay, but real question, if we were in an actual survival situation, like stranded on an island, who’s the first one to panic?”
“Oh, Lexi,” Margo says immediately.
Lexi gasps. “Excuse me?”
“You’d freak out if your phone died, let alone if we had to catch our own food,” Margo teases.
“She’s not wrong,” he says. “You told me you once left a restaurant because the Wi-Fi was slow.”
“I have standards and a high-stakes job. Sue me.” She winks. “I dare ya.”
“I’m not suing the lawyer,” Connor replies, smirking. “I may come off as dumb, but I’m not that stupid.”
Wes laughs, shaking his head. “Which makes it even funnier that you agreed to come on this trip. No room service, no real air conditioning upstairs, and I’m pretty sure you asked if the lake had filtered water.”
“It’s a reasonable question! There are bacteria in freshwater.”
“I’m just saying,” Wes says, leaning back, “I half expected you to take a rideshare back to Atlanta the first night.”
“I’m sorry, I like nice things and have good taste,” Lexi mutters, sipping her wine with a dramatic sigh. “You’re lucky I like y’all.”
They all laugh as Lexi flips them off with a perfectly manicured hand.
“Who’d actually survive, though?” I ask, swirling my drink.
“Slone,” Margo and Anderson say in unison.
Slone tilts her head, considering, and then nods in agreement. “Yeah, I’d survive out of spite.”
