“I’ll be in the kitchen,” I quickly answered.

I looked at her once more, remembering the last time she needed a moment alone with my niece. But none of that mattered now. Re-living it only hurt me, and I was finally ready to let go of the hurt, and replace it with the hope that once resided inside.

“Maggie, can you come here a second?” she called, smiling at me.

I stood up and walked towards the door, pausing as she said my name, “Spencer?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s hard for me to regret all of it…all of what I’ve done. It led me to you. And I know how selfish this might sound, but…the time I had with you…I loved it. I needed it. And I’m so, so sorry. I wish it could’ve happened any other way but that way. If I could do it all over again…I would never…”

“I needed it too. It was time for me to grow up, Ashley. This wasn’t exactly the way I would’ve chosen for it to happen, of course. But I think I learned valuable lessons. I learned how to love…and one day—not yet—but one day, I’ll learn how to forgive. I learned what I’m capable of, and I learned what I could never be no matter how badly I wanted it.”

“You were always too good to stoop to this level.”

“You were always too good to have to, Ashley.”

She nodded, looking as though she might cry again. But just as the first tear prepared to fall, there was Maggie.

“Yes, Mommy?”

“I need to talk to you for a second, Mags.”

I left them, sitting at that table once again. I sipped my water, waiting. The sun was still bright and overwhelming as it made its way through the window and onto my hands that were still for the first time in months. I could hear people living their lives, believing in their own brand of normalcy. I could hear the murmur of Ashley’s voice as she spoke to Maggie.

I had waited so long and yet, this moment felt completely new. There was nothing on the other side of that waiting that drove me after all the time spent driving towards this present.

This result.

It was a climax that murmured unimpressively along into another prologue. Unimpressive like yellow paint.

Or another chance you never saw coming.