I turned the house where Grace lived her hardest days into a temporary shelter. Not huge. Not perfect. But real. A place where a woman can arrive with one bag and shaking hands and hear one sentence that changes the air in her lungs:
“You’re safe here.”
In one bedroom, I placed an empty crib.
Not to punish myself.
To remember why I keep going.
Some nights I sit alone and memories come in waves—Grace laughing as a little girl, Grace rubbing her belly when she was pregnant, Grace staring at the floor while saying “everything’s fine.”
It still hurts. The kind of hurt that doesn’t negotiate.
