Exactly five days after an emergency C-section that Grant hadn’t even bothered to show up for, I took a taxi home from the hospital holding our newborn daughter Maisie against my chest, my stitches throbbing with every step the doctor had warned me not to take, and walked in to find a strange woman’s silver heels by the stairs, my cream silk robe on the marketing consultant he’d hired six months earlier, and Grant acting like I was the one who’d rudely interrupted something important.

Five years later.

Maisie is six years old.

She’s in first grade. She loves math, and art, and soccer. She’s the fastest runner in her class. She has a pet goldfish named Bubbles that she talks to every night before bed. She still has her dad’s curly brown hair and my dad’s blue eyes, but her smile is all Sam’s.

She calls Sam “Daddy.”

She’s never asked about Grant.

She’s never needed to.

Sam is her dad. In every way that matters.

He’s the one who taught her to ride a bike.

He’s the one who stays up with her when she has a fever.

He’s the one who walks her down the aisle every year at her school’s father-daughter dance.

He’s the one who loves her like she’s his own flesh and blood.

Because she is.

Veridian is now one of the largest marketing firms on the East Coast. We have offices in five cities, two hundred employees, clients all over the world. I still run it, but I only work three days a week now. The rest of the time, I’m with Maisie. I volunteer at her school. I coach her soccer team. I take her to the park every afternoon after school, and we get ice cream, and we talk about her day.

Sam is still a pediatrician. He works four days a week, and he loves his job. He still makes pancakes on weekends. He still makes me laugh until my sides hurt. We have another baby now—Liam, two years old, the spitting image of Sam, wild and crazy and obsessed with dinosaurs.

Eli is retired now. He spends his days fishing, and playing golf, and spoiling Maisie and Liam rotten. He’s their honorary grandpa. They call him Papa Eli.

Life is good.

Life is quiet.

Until the day the letter comes.

It’s a Tuesday. I’m in the kitchen, packing Maisie’s lunch for school, when the mailman drops it off.

It’s from the state department of corrections.

My hands go cold when I see the return address.

I know what this is.

Grant is up for parole.

He’s served ten years of his fifteen-year sentence. He’s eligible for early release for good behavior.

I open the letter with shaking hands.

It’s a notice.

A parole hearing is scheduled in three weeks.

I have the right to testify. To tell the parole board why he should stay in prison.

I stand there for a long time, holding the letter, staring at it.

Memories flash through my head.

Walking in on him and Sienna.

The nineteen missed calls from the OR.

Him and Vivian plotting to take Maisie.

Him breaking into my house with a baseball bat, screaming my name.

Sam walks in, holding Liam, who’s half-asleep on his shoulder.

He sees my face.

“Hey,” he says, putting Liam down on the couch and walking over to me. “What’s wrong? What is it?”

I hand him the letter.

He reads it. His face hardens.

“Okay,” he says, putting the letter down and wrapping his arms around me. “Okay. We’ll handle this. We’ll go to the hearing. We’ll tell them everything. He’s not getting out. Not after what he did. Not while we’re here to fight.”

I nod, burying my face in his chest.

“I know,” I say. “I know. But… what if he does? What if he gets out? What if he comes after us? After Maisie?”

Sam holds me tighter.

“Then we’ll fight him,” he says. “We have the best lawyers. We have the best security. We have each other. And Maisie? She’s six years old. She’s smart. She’s strong. She’s your daughter. She’s not going to let anyone hurt her. Or Liam. Or us.”

He pulls back, looking me in the eyes.

“We’ve come too far to let him ruin this,” he says. “We’ve built something good here. Something real. We’re not going to let him take that away from us. Ever.”

I look past him, through the kitchen window, into the backyard.

Maisie is out there, playing soccer with Eli. She’s laughing, running as fast as she can, the sun shining on her curly hair.

Liam is awake now, crawling around the living room, chewing on a dinosaur toy.

Everything I love is in this house.

Everything I’ve fought for.

Everything I’ve built.

I take a deep breath.

I pick up the letter.

I fold it up and put it in my desk drawer, where I keep all the important papers.

Then I turn to Sam, and I smile.

“You’re right,” I say. “We’ve got this.”

I walk over to the counter and finish packing Maisie’s lunch, putting a little note in her box—*I love you more than ice cream*—and a pack of her favorite gummy bears as a treat.

When Maisie comes in from the backyard, red-faced and sweaty, she runs straight to me and wraps her arms around my legs.

“Mommy!” she says, looking up at me with those big blue eyes. “Papa Eli says I’m gonna be a professional soccer player when I grow up! Can I? Please?”

I kneel down, hugging her tight, kissing the top of her head.

“Of course you can, baby girl,” I say. “You can be anything you want to be. Anything at all.”

She grins, grabs her lunch box, and runs to the door where Sam is waiting with her backpack.

“Come on, Daddy!” she yells. “We’re gonna be late for school!”

Sam laughs, slinging her backpack over his shoulder, and follows her out to the car.

Eli walks in a minute later, holding his fishing hat, and winks at me.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

“Everything’s perfect,” I say.

He nods. “Good. I’ll see you tonight for dinner. I’m bringing the steaks.”

“Can’t wait.”

When he’s gone, I walk back to the desk and open the drawer, looking at the parole letter one more time.

Then I close the drawer.