We rebuilt relationships with customers who had known our father.
And slowly, the company began feeling like ours again.
Recovery was more complicated for me.
For months, certain everyday things made me uneasy.
I couldn’t drink warm milk.
I checked the seals on everything I used.
I struggled with the realization that someone I had trusted completely had been quietly manipulating my health and my life.
Three years of betrayal didn’t disappear because a court case ended.
Healing happened much more slowly.
But it happened.
One year after the SUV entered the river, Mason and I stood together at the end of a pier overlooking the bay.
The afternoon was quiet.
The air smelled of salt and cold water.
Behind us, Sterling Shipyard was busy again.
Cranes moved across the harbor.
Workers called to one another from the docks.
Ships waited to be loaded.
Mason reached inside his coat.
He pulled out an old leather strap.
I immediately recognized it.
It was one of the straps he had once used when maintaining the appearance that his legs could no longer support him.
He turned it over in his hands.
“Fifteen years,” he said quietly.
Then he tossed it into the water.
We watched it disappear beneath the surface.
“No more hiding.”
I reached over and took his hand.
