“I know what I want, and it’s her. Come to dinner. Watch her with me and my family. You’ll see what I see.”

Margaret hesitated because she wasn’t sure Sarah really wanted her there or if she’d invited her just to be polite. “I don’t want to intrude.”

“You’re not. My parents would love to see you again.”

“You’re this sure about her?”

“Yes.” Luke sounded too sure for her to doubt him. “Please, Margaret. Join us. See what I see, so you and Sarah can truly move on and be there for the boys together.”

“I’d love to.”

“Great. I’m headed home to check on the horses.”

“Thank you, Luke. I feel like without you, I’d have never known the truth. Sarah and I would have gone on as we always have, enduring each other. I wouldn’t know about the money either. I was about to lose this house, and that would have just killed me. I love this place.”

And because of Sarah, someone she’d blamed for everything and treated terribly, she got to keep her home. She had financial security, the boys were back in her life, and given time, she had someone she could count on to be there for her if she needed them.

But there was a lot of healing left to do.

“It’ll be nice for all of us to be living close together someday soon.” Luke waved his goodbye, climbed into his truck, and drove off with a quick honk.

Margaret’s head spun with all the new information and the possibility that Luke and Sarah would live next door if everything worked out with them.

She needed time to come to terms with Sean’s other life. Because it wasn’t the one she thought he’d been living. She needed to reconcile what she’d believed of Sarah and the reality that all this time she’d been reaching out and helping.

Margaret wanted to believe it was to make up for the things Sarah had done to Sean, but if that were true, she’d have stopped long ago when her attempts were ignored and outright dismissed. Yet Sarah had persisted with her notes.

Sarah hadn’t turned her back on Margaret the way she’d done to Sarah. She’d stepped up to be the family Margaret didn’t deserve and Sean didn’t know how to be, because she hadn’t taught him well.

Maybe she hadn’t been the best mother. But she’d taught Sean better than stealing and using people to get what you want.

Sarah hadn’t told her everything. She’d talked about what happened with the business and how Sean’s accident—not so much an accident if he was driving drunk—affected the business.

She hadn’t spoken about how his drinking impacted their marriage, or how his traveling strained things. She hinted about Sean being absent a lot. But had Sarah pushed Sean away? Why didn’t he want to be home with his wife and children? What really went wrong in the marriage? Margaret knew all too well how easy it was for one to collapse.