CHAPTER 7
Money and jail time don’t heal the bruises inside.
Mia had nightmares for months. She flinched if anyone raised their hand too fast. She couldn’t stand the sound of raised voices. She couldn’t look at wedding photos, couldn’t wear white, couldn’t walk past the building where the Hale penthouse had been without panicking.
She sold the condo a year later. Not because she had to — because she wanted to. She used the money to buy a smaller, sunnier place with a big backyard for the rescue dog she adopted, a golden retriever puppy she named Hope.
She went to therapy twice a week. She joined a support group for domestic violence survivors. She started volunteering at the center named after her, answering the hotline, sitting with girls who came in bloody and scared just like she had, telling them: “You are not alone. It is not your fault. You can fight back. And you can win.”
I watched her slowly come back to life.
The girl who’d stumbled through my door at 2:17 a.m., broken and bleeding, was gone. In her place was a woman — fierce, kind, unshakable, who knew exactly what she was worth and would never, ever let anyone take it from her again.
Three years after the wedding night, she called me from work one day, laughing.
“Mom? You’ll never guess who I just met.”
“Who, baby?”
“Dr. Carter. The new ER director at the hospital. He was the resident who stitched my lip that night. He just asked me out for coffee.”
I smiled.
May you like
“Say yes.”
She did.
