People ask me if I have closure. They ask if seeing Diane in prison brings me peace.
The truth is, there is no closure for the death of a child. There is no “moving on.” There is only moving forward. The hole in my heart is exactly the shape of two little boys, and it will never be filled.
But I am not broken.
Diane tried to destroy me. She tried to paint me as an unfit mother, to erase me from the narrative of my own family. She wanted to break me so completely that I would crumble.
Instead, she forged me into steel.
She sits in a cell today, staring at concrete walls, forgotten by the world. Her husband is destitute and alone. Her son is estranged and broken. Her legacy is ash.
But mine?
I look out the kitchen window. Emma is running through the grass, chasing a butterfly between the two maple trees. She is laughing—a loud, free, joyous sound.
I survived. My daughter survived. We are building a life filled with color and light, a life that Diane Morrison can never touch again.
And that, in the end, is the greatest revenge of all. To live well. To be happy. To be the mother she said I could never be.
My boys are gone, but they saved us. In their death, they revealed the monster in our midst before she could take Emma too. They gave us the truth.
I place my hand on the glass of the window, watching my daughter play in the shadow of her brothers’ trees.
“We’re okay,” I whisper to the empty room. “We made it.”
And for the first time in a long time, I believe it.
