Not because I planned to fight him again.
Because forgetting had once made me vulnerable to him.
Remembering made me free.
That autumn, I repaired the fence properly.
Knox supervised from the grass, lifting his head whenever the drill whined.
My knee still ached when the weather turned.
The pantry doorframe still carried pencil marks from a childhood I could not rewrite.
But the deed was locked in a fireproof box under my own name.
The house was quiet.
And for the first time in my life, quiet did not mean I had surrendered.
It meant he was gone, the door was locked, and nothing inside belonged to him anymore.
