Adam laughed from the doorway, where he stood holding the stuffed rabbit from last year, its ears slightly worn from a thousand hugs. “I think a rabbit adventure can be arranged.”

Lily climbed into his lap, the rabbit clutched between them, and I looked at the three of us in the glow of the tree. The room smelled like cinnamon and pine. The windows were frosted at the edges. Somewhere upstairs, my father was already singing off-key.

A year earlier, I had stood in another house with blood on my lip and my daughter shaking against my leg, believing the people who should have protected us were the ones we needed protection from. I had been right about that. But I hadn’t known the rest of the story: that a husband could change, slowly and imperfectly and with receipts to prove it. That a family could be rebuilt from the people who stayed, not the people who shared your last name.

Lily tugged the rabbit’s ear and tilted her head at me.

“Mama? Is Grandma Diane still mad at us?”

I sat down on the rug and pulled her close, kissing the top of her head.

“No, sweetheart,” I said. “We’re not angry anymore. We just live somewhere different now.”

She nodded, satisfied, and went back to her stocking. Outside, the first snow of the year began to fall.

For the first time in a long time, I felt no need to look over my shoulder. We were home.

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