Sarah walked over to David’s bedside. She reached out and took his hand. It was a little awkward. They were strangers, really. They had fifty years of missed birthdays and empty dinners between them.

But David didn’t pull away. He held her hand tight.

He looked up at me, and his eyes were still patchy, still filled with the fog of the brain injury.

He still didn’t remember our daughter’s middle name, or the color of our kitchen cabinets, or the trip we took to Niagara Falls for our tenth anniversary.

But he knew I was his wife.

“Clara,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, David,” I said, sitting on the edge of the mattress and taking his other hand. “We’re going to figure it out.”

We didn’t get a perfect, happy ending. The construction company went into temporary receivership while the legal mess was sorted out, and we are still struggling to pay off those massive hospital bills. Mark is currently awaiting trial, and his mother refuses to speak to us because she says we ruined her family.

But yesterday, Sarah came over to our house for dinner.

She brought a batch of homemade peach cobbler. It was a little burnt on the edges, but nobody cared.

David sat at the head of the table. He got confused twice during dinner, calling Bobby by his brother’s name, but we just laughed and corrected him.

We are building something new. It’s messy, and it’s complicated, and some days I still feel like crying when I look at our bank account.

But we are moving forward. And that’s basically where things are now. I still don’t really know how to feel about any of it, but at least we are finally telling the truth.