The golf buddy who filed the fake complaint had his own reckoning. My cleaning contract was quietly restored once the truth came out.
Collin keeps his townhouse and his watch, for now.
He does not keep the daughter he treated like a prize to be won from her own mother.
He sees Lark on a careful, supervised schedule, which is far more than I think he deserves and exactly as much as Lark decides she wants.
Here is the part I hold onto.
With the restored income, the very first thing I did — before I caught up a single bill — was drive back to that pawn shop.
My grandmother’s gold locket was still in the case.
I bought it back.
It’s Lark’s now. I gave it to her the day the custody order was final, and I told her it had belonged to four generations of women in our family who did hard things for the people they loved.
