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She pulled her phone out and called Fia. “I had pizza. I thought of you.”

“Liar.”

“I did.”

“Are you wandering around all sad?”

She looked up the street, at the red brick buildings and the bustling crowds lined up in front of restaurants. There was an especially big line in front of a bakery that served Italian pastries, and Rory decided to get in it while she talked on the phone.

“I am not wandering around sad.”

The women in front of her turned around and looked at her as she said that. And judging by their quick appraisal of her, they knew Rory was a liar.

But she would never see them again.

That was the interesting thing about wandering around the city. She might feel like shecouldknow them, but she didn’t. Her pain was anonymous. She wasn’t even the only woman wandering the streets looking sad. There was a woman just across the street screaming into her phone with no regard for anyone or anything else but her own rage. These people were all strangers. She was the main character. Why bother to rein her anger in at all?

It was very different than Pyrite Falls in that way. Where she would always run into people she knew.

And that just didn’t feel like as big of a disaster as it once had.

“Well that’s good,” said Fia.

“I’m going to order pastries. So I’ll get one and think of you.”

“I appreciate that. Are you going to be sad that you didn’t move there?”

“No,” she said easily. “This place is beautiful. But it’s not home.”

Though she realized something interesting. She could be at home here. If she wanted to be. Just like she could now be home in Pyrite Falls.

Because she was at home in her own skin.

That was what had happened to her over these past few weeks.

She had found that she could be brave. She could climb a rope and a mountain, and she could declare her love for a man who couldn’t declare it back.

She was beautiful, when it mattered.

She felt that now, too.

She didn’t need to prove anything. She simply didn’t.

And that was its own kind of triumph.

What a terrible thing to know that she could never have achieved this growth without Gideon. Without walking through this particular valley of the shadow of death.

Without this dark night of the soul.

She couldn’t have found this wholeness without being broken.

And it really sucked.

“Well, I’m glad you’re staying. You know we have a lot of work at Sullivan’s Point. And the new era is just beginning. We are finally pulling our weight. We aren’t beholden to the Kings.”

“No. That gives us less of an occasion to have town hall meetings, I suppose. And less reason for you and Landry to fight.”

“I’m sure we will think of reasons,” said Fia. She sounded just a little bit distracted.