Ch.70: The New Normal

The shovel sliced into the damp earth, a rhythmic, grounding sound that echoed through the quiet cemetery. I didn't hire a groundskeeper for this task. My own muscles burned as I tossed soil back into the small, rectangular void where I had once dug until my fingers bled. The bricks were gone, long ago entered into evidence, leaving only a hollow space that had acted as a black hole for my sanity for over a year.

It was a gray morning, the same kind of rain misting the air as the day my nightmare began. Each spadeful of dirt felt like a layer of a past life being laid to rest. I was finally filling the grave I had stood over when Julian Thorne was just a god on a screen and I was just a ghost in a hospital blanket.

The obstacle arrived with a sudden, icy gust of wind that rattled the iron gates. My breath hitched, a phantom buzzing starting in my ears. I felt a ghost of that old, paralyzing fear—the sensation of being watched from a black sedan, of being a target in a game I didn't know I was playing. My skin prickled with a cold sweat, my nervous system reflexively bracing for a blow that was no longer coming.

I stopped, my boots sinking into the fresh mud. I looked toward the gate, half-expecting to see a shadow or a silicone mask.

The fear was a jagged, familiar weight in my chest. For a second, I was back in the padded cell, questioning if the man holding my baby was real or a chemical hallucination. I gripped the wooden handle of the shovel so hard the splinters bit into my palms, the physical pain acting as an anchor to the present.

Then, I looked at the headstone.

The name *Daisy Vance* was carved there, but beneath it, the dates had been polished away, replaced by a simple inscription: *The Truth Shall Set You Free.*

I let the breath go. The buzzing died down to a hum, then vanished entirely. The shadows in the treeline were just trees. The cold wind was just weather. Julian Thorne was in a concrete box two hundred miles away, and my daughter was at home, eating sliced peaches and pulling Leo’s hair.

I reached into the pocket of my coat and pulled out a small, crumpled object. The yellow beanie. The crooked stitches I had knitted with shaking hands while I waited for a baby they told me was dead. It was stained with dirt and salt, a relic of the woman who had been gaslit into a ward.

I didn't bury it. I didn't want it hidden in the dark anymore.

I walked to the headstone and placed the yellow yarn over the cold marble. I smoothed the fabric one last time, a silent memorial to the 'victim' I used to be—the nurse who was too broken to fight back, the mother who was told she was crazy. I stepped away from the grave, the shovel left leaning against a willow tree.

The rain didn't feel like a shroud anymore. It felt like a cleansing. I walked toward the car where Leo was waiting, his face a steady silhouette against the glass. I didn't look back at the empty plot. I had filled the hole in the ground, and in doing so, I had finally mended the hole in myself.

I'm not Elena the Victim. I'm Elena the Mother. And I won.