He Gave Her My Home So I Took Back My Life Chapter 15
While the Ashfords were still drowning in the aftermath, I was standing inside a house that had been abandoned for nearly thirty years.
It was the first project of the Hale Historic Home Restoration Foundation.
And the first thing I had ever led not as someone’s wife or someone’s daughter-in-law, but under my own name.
Sunlight filtered through broken shutters, falling across weather-stained walls. The wooden floor creaked underfoot, yet everything about the place felt almost impossibly beautiful.
“The load-bearing structure can be saved, and the fireplace is definitely worth restoring.”
Mateo came down from the second floor, dressed in dark work clothes with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. He stopped in front of me. He didn’t look at the blueprints in my hand. He just looked at me.
“I’ve waited a long time for this.”
I smiled. “For me to take over a house that’s practically collapsing?”
“For you to become yourself again.”
His voice was very quiet.
After a moment, he asked, “Do you remember the first day of sophomore year? There was a boy whose financial aid paperwork got messed up, and the dorm supervisor wouldn’t let him move in.”
The memory came back with startling clarity.
That day, I had just finished giving a speech as a student representative. On my way past the dorm, I saw a tall but visibly distressed boy standing outside.
His old suitcase had split open, clothes and books scattered on the ground. The dorm supervisor kept repeating that until his payment was cleared, he couldn’t move in.
I had stopped, used my student representative status to vouch for him temporarily, and then helped him carry his things into an empty storage room until the school could sort it out the next day.
He had been so embarrassed he’d barely looked up.
Only as I was leaving had he muttered a soft, “Thank you.”
I looked at Mateo, standing before me now.
The thin, silent boy from that memory slowly merged with the man in front of me.
“That was you?”
Mateo smiled.
“It was.”