And as for Uncle Ray? He’s currently serving a life sentence in the very prison where my mother spent six years. Sometimes, when the world feels unfair, I think about him sitting in that cell, staring at the same four walls he tried to trap her in.
Justice isn’t always fast. It isn’t always clean. But as I look at my family sitting around the dinner table—whole, safe, and finally free—I know that it is enough. We are the survivors of a lie, and we are finally living the truth.