“I’m coming,” I answered.
I stood, carrying the letter with me.
At the door, Denise touched my arm.
“Joanna.”
I turned.
“If you had known,” she said, “would you have gone?”
I looked through the doorway.
Ethan stood at the end of the hall holding two miniature cheesecakes, one in each hand.
He had frosting on the sleeve of his graduation gown.
He looked happy.
Safe.
Mine in every way that mattered and never mine in the way possession mattered.
Behind me was the letter from the life I had once imagined.
Ahead of me was the child who had become the center of the life I actually lived.
And for the first time in ten years, I realized the question was not whether I regretted choosing Ethan.
I didn’t.
The question was whether I had ever truly been allowed to choose everything else.
I looked at Denise.
