One of the workers looked at me.

“Bring the sledgehammer.”

Eleanor gasped.

“You cannot break that! Do you know how much it cost?”

I looked at her.

“That is exactly your problem.”

Hank stepped forward.

The hammer came down.

The granite cracked.

Again.

The plaque broke apart.

My name split through the center.

The false year of my death fractured into pieces.

I stood there watching.

And for the first time, I felt nothing but relief.

I bent down and picked up a small fragment bearing the numbers 2014.

I slipped it into my coat pocket.

Not because I wanted to preserve their lie.

Because I wanted to remember the year they tried to erase me.

My mother was crying now.

Not elegant tears.

Not society-party tears.

Real ones.

“Annie, please.”

She reached toward me.

“We’re still your parents. We made a mistake. Can’t we start over?”

I stopped near the front door.

Then I looked back at the marble floors, expensive artwork, crystal chandeliers, and the woman who had once believed all of it mattered more than her own daughter.

“You can’t graft a living branch onto a dead tree, Eleanor.”

She stared at me.

“You buried Anastasia Dunaway years ago.”

I opened the door.

“The difference is that when I buried her, I did it so I could finally live.”

I walked outside.

Climbed into the truck.

And never looked back.

As we headed north toward Vermont, I reached into my pocket and felt the sharp edge of the broken granite.

Ahead of me waited orchards.

Open land.

Trees that still needed tending.

Soil that still needed planting.

A life that belonged entirely to me.

For twenty-seven years, I had lived beneath somebody else’s shadow.

For the first time, I finally understood what it felt like to stand completely in the light.