Some truths are too painful to remember. For Maeve, the crash that killed her mother became a nightmare where crucial pieces kept shifting. She clung to the belief that her mother was driving – until the courtroom forced her to acknowledge the flashes of memory showing her own hands gripping the wheel.
Sent to live with the father who’d abandoned her, Maeve treated Thomas’s family like intruders. Julia’s kindness felt like pity, Ethan’s affection like an insult to her grief. But overhearing Thomas admit his own regrets – “I should have been there for her” – cracked open a door Maeve had kept sealed. Her mother’s final letter held the key: “You don’t have to run forever.”
The mural began quietly, just something to do with her hands. But as Maeve painted stars for Ethan, she found herself adding her mother’s favorite constellations, then later accepting Thomas’s help with the higher sections. Neither forgiveness nor forgetting, but perhaps something equally precious – the courage to build something new amid the ruins.
