Chapter 29
The room grew quiet.
I touched the edge of the photograph.
Genesis had not always been cruel.
That did not make her safe.
But it made her human, and somehow that was harder.
“There’s more,” Eli said.
He pulled out a folded sheet of graph paper, yellowed at the edges. On it was a sketch of a building courtyard. Curved benches. Raised gardens. Wide windows. A central archway with vines growing up both sides.
My breath caught.
I knew that courtyard.
It was the courtyard of my apartment building.
But in Genesis’s sketch, written in neat block letters at the bottom, was a title:
Harbor House — transitional homes for women starting over.
I looked at Claire.
She nodded slowly, already understanding.
My father had not stolen Genesis’s dream.
He had preserved part of it.
But somewhere along the way, the purpose had been lost. The building became luxury units after investors changed the scope. My father had bought one for me before he could do anything else with it. Genesis had watched from a distance, believing the world had taken her only beautiful idea and handed it to another woman.
I sat there with the sketch beneath my fingertips, and something inside me shifted.
For months, I had thought the apartment represented safety because it belonged to me.
Now I saw another possibility.
May you like
Maybe safety was not only something you kept.
Maybe it was something you built outward.
