Rachel sold the house in Dublin.
She said she couldn’t walk past the basement door without feeling her throat close.
I understood.
She rented a townhouse ten minutes from mine.
Not for me.
Not because we were getting back together.
That story was over.
But because Owen slept better knowing both of us were close, and after everything that happened, close mattered more than pride.
He still checks locks sometimes.
Still asks twice who’s picking him up.
Still doesn’t like red coolers.
Maybe he never will.
But he laughs again.
Plays soccer again.
Sleeps through most nights.
Rachel goes to therapy.
So do I.
So does Owen.
That’s the part nobody writes in thrillers, I guess.
The after.
The paperwork.
The nightmares.
The way survival keeps going long after the sirens stop.
A year after it happened, Owen and I were at a gas station off I-71 on the way back from a tournament in Cincinnati.
Same chain.
Different exit.
He was in the passenger seat eating powdered donuts and getting sugar all over my console when he looked at me and said, “Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think Mom’s really okay now?”
I looked over at him.
At the gap where his front tooth had been.
At the freckles across his nose.
At the kid who had saved his mother’s life.
And I answered him with the truest thing I knew.
“She is now.”
Then I pulled back onto the highway, and this time, when my phone rang, it was just Rachel asking if we wanted pizza for dinner.
And that was the end of Trent Lawson.
