Chapter 8 - THE NEW HORIZONSpring had returned to upstate New York.
The trees along the winding country road were bursting with pale green leaves, and the air smelled of damp earth, blooming lilacs, and fresh rain.
We had bought a small, sunlit farmhouse three miles outside of town. It didn't have wedding ribbons on the porch rails, and there were no security cameras or hidden cellars in the basement. It just had wide windows, a sprawling wooden deck overlooking a rolling pasture, and an old golden retriever mix named Rusty who slept on the rug by the fireplace and snored louder than anyone in the house.
On the back porch, Ava sat at a wooden picnic table, sketching in a thick art notebook with a set of professional colored pencils I had bought her for her thirteenth birthday. Her knuckles had healed completely, leaving only a faint, silvery scar that she wore like a badge of honor—a reminder of the day she stood up and fought back.
Inside the kitchen, Tommy was standing on a step stool by the counter, eagerly helping me mix pancake batter for Saturday morning breakfast, covered from head to toe in flour.
"Dad?" Tommy asked, looking up at me with his bright hazel eyes, a smudge of white powder on his nose.
"Yeah, buddy?"
"Are we ever going to have to go back to the bad house?"
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I stopped stirring, knelt down to his eye level, and wiped the flour off his nose with my thumb. I looked out the kitchen window, past the sun-drenched porch, where Ava looked up from her sketchpad, caught my eye, and gave me a small, confident, beautiful smile.
"Never, Tommy," I said, pulling both of them into a warm, unbreakable embrace that felt like the safest place on earth. "Nobody is ever taking this home away from us again. We are safe. And we are home."
