---- Chapter 23 Ethan left town. For a few weeks, there was peace. The flowers stopped coming. The townspeople stopped their well -meaning but misguided attempts to reunite us. "You missed your chance, Anna," my neighbor said, shaking her head in disapproval. "A man like that doesn't come around twice." "| know," | said with a small smile. That afternoon, Daniel asked me to marry him. There was no grand gesture, no fancy ring. He just took my hand as we were planting roses in my garden and said, "| love you, Anna. Let me spend the rest of my life making you happy." He was nervous, his hand trembling slightly in mine. It was so different from Ethan's proposal, a grand, public spectacle on a yacht, complete with fireworks and a diamond the size of a small rock. Ethan's proposal had been a transaction, a declaration of ownership. Daniel's was a simple, heartfelt plea. | remembered the love | had for Ethan, a bright, fierce flame that he had systematically extinguished with his cruelty. | had thought | would never love again. But Daniel... Daniel had patiently, carefully, coaxed the embers of my heart back to life. "Yes," | whispered, tears of joy running down my cheeks. "Yes, ---- - I'll marry you." He whooped with joy, lifting me up and spinning me around in the garden, a pure, unadulterated happiness radiating from him. We decided to have a simple wedding, a small ceremony in the garden of my grandmother's old house, which | had decided not to sell after all. It was my home now. Aweek before the wedding, | went to the cemetery to visit Lily and my grandmother. | wanted to tell them my news. He was there. Ethan. Standing before their graves. He had brought Olivia with him. She was a ghost of her former self, thin and frail, her eyes empty and haunted. She looked at me with a dull, simmering hatred. "| brought her for you, Sarah," Ethan said, his voice calm, reasonable. "For your revenge. Do whatever you want to her. | won't stop you." | looked at the broken woman before me. | felt nothing. No anger, no satisfaction. Just a vast, weary emptiness. "Take her away, Ethan," | said. "And make sure she serves her sentence for what she did." "But... your revenge..." he stammered, confused. "My revenge," | said, "is living a happy life. Something you will never understand." ---- Olivia started to laugh then, a high, unhinged sound. "He's the one you should hate!" she shrieked, pointing a bony finger at Ethan. "He's the one who had your precious baby's life snuffed out! | was just the tool!" She spat at him. "He told me he'd marry me if | got rid of you and the girl. It was his idea!" "Take her to the police," | said to Ethan, my voice like ice. | turned my back on them and knelt before the graves, my heart a cold, heavy stone in my chest. "Is your hatred for me any less now?" Ethan asked, his voice a desperate plea from behind me. "I've brought you justice." | didn't answer him. | didn't even turn around. | had nothing left to say to him.