Epilogue
Epilogue
Years later, people sometimes asked Ella why yellow was her favorite color.
She always smiled before answering.
"Because yellow reminds me that people may laugh at what you're wearing..."
She touched the little silver sun pendant that never left her neck.
"...but they can never laugh away who you really are."
The dress that had been mocked at a summer barbecue was carefully preserved in the back of her closet.
Not because it was expensive.
Not because it was fashionable.
But because it marked the day a frightened fourteen-year-old girl learned that dignity is never measured by the price of your clothes.
It is measured by the courage to keep standing when others try to make you feel small.
And every summer after that, as the sun set over Willow Lake, a mother and daughter sat together on the old porch swing, reading one more of Thomas Bennett's letters.
May you like
Not mourning the years that had been stolen.
But celebrating the love that, despite every lie, had found its way home in the end.
