All Chapters of TERMS OF THE HEART : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Vaughn's sentencing hearing arrived on an unremarkable Tuesday morning, three months after his own restraining order had gone into effect, and I found myself dressing for a courtroom I hadn't expected to enter again so soon, uncertain whether attending was an act of closure or simply another obligation this family's complicated history required of me."You don't have to come," Damien told me, adjusting his tie in the mirror with hands that weren't entirely steady. "Griffith can represent our interests. Nobody would think less of you for staying home.""I want to be there," I said, and meant it, though I couldn't fully articulate why. "I think I need to see it actually finished, in a room, with a judge saying the words out loud, rather than simply reading about it in a filing Griffith forwards us afterwards."The courtroom was smaller than the one where I'd once testified, and considerably less crowded — no reporters this time, no gallery packed with people hungry for scandal, simply a

I visited my father the following weekend, finding him back behind the register at his own hardware store for the first time since his stroke, insisting on managing at least a few hours a week despite Damien's gentle suggestion that he could retire entirely if he wanted to."I like the register," my father told me when I raised the subject again. "I like knowing my hands still remember how to count change, even after everything my body's been through this year. Let an old man keep his register, Ivy. It's not about the money anymore.""I know," I said, settling onto the stool behind the counter beside him. "I just worry about you overdoing it.""I worry about you too," he said, surprising me. "Not the money worry anymore, thank God. A different kind. I worry whether you're actually happy, underneath all the drama this past year has thrown at you, or whether you've gotten very good at performing happiness because the alternative feels ungrateful, given everything Damien's done for us."

Sofia and Griffith went on their actual first date the following Friday, and I confess I spent an embarrassing amount of that evening pacing the penthouse, checking my phone for updates Sofia had explicitly asked me not to send her while she was trying to focus on the actual date."You're worse than her mother would be," Damien observed, watching me refresh my phone for the fourth time in ten minutes. "I didn't realise you'd become quite this invested in Sofia's romantic life.""She's become one of my closest friends," I said, setting the phone down with visible effort. "I want this to go well for her. She's spent so many years managing everyone else's happiness. I want her to have some of her own, for once.""I understand the impulse," Damien said, settling beside me on the sofa. "I've spent considerable time this past year watching you extend exactly that kind of care to everyone around us — my grandmother, your father, now Sofia. I don't think I fully appreciated, before I married

Priya's wedding, when it finally arrived, unfolded in a community garden in Queens that Daniel had chosen specifically because it reminded him of his grandmother's small Sicilian courtyard, string lights instead of chandeliers, folding chairs instead of the elaborate seating arrangements that had defined my own wedding months earlier."You look beautiful," I told Priya, adjusting her veil in the small changing room the community centre had set up next door, watching my best friend's reflection with a fondness that had only deepened across the years of our friendship."I look like I'm about to cry off all my makeup," Priya admitted, though she was glowing despite her nerves. "Ivy. Do you remember when we were nineteen, splitting rent on that apartment with the radiator that never worked, and I told you I didn't believe in marriage because I'd never seen it work out for anyone we knew?""I remember.""I don't know when that changed. I think it might have been watching you and Damien, ac

Our actual wedding anniversary arrived considerably more quietly than the eventful year that had preceded it, and we chose to celebrate simply, at home, rather than with any of the elaborate public gestures our marriage's public profile might have otherwise demanded."Do you remember what you were thinking, exactly one year ago?" Damien asked, both of us settled on the same terrace where we'd once discussed an expiring contract, considerably calmer circumstances surrounding us now."Terrified," I admitted. "Convinced I was making the biggest mistake of my life, signing thirty-one pages of legal terms with a stranger I'd met twice.""I was terrified too," Damien confessed. "Though I don't think I let myself acknowledge it at the time. I kept telling myself it was simply a strategic solution to a legal problem, refusing to examine why the strategic solution felt considerably more significant than any other business decision I'd ever made.""When did you know?" I asked. "That it had stop