Three months later, things still weren’t normal.
Noah had nightmares — sometimes he’d wake up screaming if he couldn’t see me. He clung tighter than before, hated closed doors. Lily wouldn’t talk about her dad. Not to me, not to her therapist, not even to herself.
She just shut down.
The system moved fast after the media picked up the story. Jeremy’s trial was scheduled within weeks. The court offered him a deal — lesser charges if he pled guilty. He refused.
I sat through every hearing. Every photograph. Every insult his lawyer hurled, trying to paint me unstable. But it didn’t matter anymore. The evidence was too strong. The Ring footage. Lily’s testimony. My clean record.
In the end, Jeremy was sentenced to five years.
I didn’t feel relief. Just… air.
But I knew something had to change. The kids needed more than safety. They needed healing.
I moved us to a new town. New school. New therapist. I took a part-time job at a bookstore so I could be home more. We built new routines — pancakes every Sunday, bedtime stories, journaling with Lily every night.
She still hadn’t said his name.
Then one night, she slid a notebook across the table. “You can read it if you want.”
