Medusa Painting

Seraphina Blackwood discovered the truth on an ordinary Thursday. After years of predawn breakfasts and midnight work sessions, after countless school plays and bedtime stories, her eight year old son had chosen someone else to call family. The other woman had been there all along, slowly taking her place while Sera kept their household afloat. In the courtroom, facing a battle she could win but would destroy her son to fight, Sera did the unthinkable. She gave them everything they wanted. The perfect house. The perfect custody arrangement. The perfect life without her. But when a devoted mother walks away with nothing but her mother's old painting, when she stops fighting for what was taken and starts building something entirely her own, the world had better pay attention. Because some women don't break when they lose everything, because sometimes the only way forward is to allow it all burn down and see what rises from the ashes.