Maeve never expected to rebuild her life in the home of the father who left her. After the crash that took her mother, every corner of Thomas’s house felt alien – from Julia’s strained kindness to baby Ethan’s oblivious joy. She wore her grief like armor, pushing everyone away, until the courtroom forced her to confront an unbearable truth: she’d been behind the wheel that fatal night.
The weight of guilt might have destroyed her if not for overhearing Thomas’s raw confession to Julia: “I should have been there for her.” Those words cracked Maeve’s defenses enough to finally read her mother’s last letter – its message about imperfect love and second chances. Slowly, tentatively, she began accepting Julia’s waffles, letting Ethan grasp her finger, even sharing quiet moments with the father she’d resented for years.
The mural she painted in Ethan’s room – swirling stars against a midnight blue – wasn’t just decoration. Each brushstroke marked a choice: to remember her mother without being consumed by loss, to let this awkward, patchwork family help carry the weight she’d borne alone.
