It had become something of a joke between them. The more she said she hated him, the more it meant she loved him. Most of the time.

Her aunt Josephine had once told her that making love is the most honest thing you can do with another person. So if you’re not ready to lay bare your soul to a boy, she’d said, you should probably wait.

Sutton wished she had waited. She wished she’d done so many things differently. Especially facing the demons when they’d come for her, instead of running away. There was a life to be led now, one fraught with terror. She caressed her stomach, the life within her. Yes, she was scared. So very scared. But there was hope again. A chance for them to start anew.

Therapy had helped with the guilt. With the pain. The knowledge her own child had created an untenable world for her, had manipulated her, had murdered her son, and tried to kill her and Ethan as well, was hard to fathom. Surreal, at times.

That Sutton had killed her daughter in turn was difficult to live with. It would never get better. She would always carry the blame, the sense that if only she’d acted differently in her teens, Ivy wouldn’t have turned into a monster.

The therapist made her understand that it wasn’t her fault. That Ivy’s actions were her own.

Joel Robinson had defended her in court, and she was finishing her probation next week. She’d gotten off lightly, and she knew it. The government had good cause to throw her in jail, but Robinson was as good as they came, and the plea deal was very satisfying to all parties involved.

Through it all, Ethan had been a rock.

They weren’t fixed, the two of them, but there was hope. They’d been changed by the horror of all they lost, and what it had cost them. Changed by purposefully forgiving themselves. Changed by visiting the grave of the woman who’d wreaked terror in their lives. Changed by retreating to their art and each other, the only things they ever truly needed. Changed by finding truth in their love.

Things were almost too perfect. Sutton decided not to think about it. If she didn’t, perhaps things would stay this way forever.

However you looked at it, they were healing, cleanly. Together.

In the afternoons, they sat on the porch, in the swing. Touching, always touching. The air was cool now. Forgotten leaves littered the lawn, a final spray of gold and rust. Today, Sutton’s head was in Ethan’s lap. His right hand rested on her burgeoning belly; his left held a book he’d been asked to endorse. It was quiet. Calm. Normal. The breeze and the book’s pages whispered together.