Chapter 6 - The RebuildingSix months later.
The house in Sacramento was sold. I had moved Sophie to a quiet town in the Pacific Northwest, near the coast, where the air was clean and the trees were tall. She was in school again, and though the road to recovery was long, the spark had returned to her eyes. She drew every day, and her sketchbooks were filled with bright colors and dragons and spaceships.
Lourdes was serving a long sentence for child abuse and conspiracy. Ricardo had been found in a different state, arrested on a warrant I had helped initiate.
I sat on the porch of our new home, watching the sunset over the Pacific. Sophie came out and sat beside me, her head resting on my shoulder.
"Dad?"
"Yeah, kiddo?"
"Are we staying here for a long time?"
"As long as you want," I said, putting my arm around her.
May you like
I wasn't a filmmaker anymore—at least, not for a while. I was just a dad. And in the quiet of the coastal evening, listening to the waves, I knew that the greatest story I would ever be a part of wasn't one I captured through a lens. It was the one I was living, one day at a time, with the daughter I had almost lost and finally, truly, learned how to protect.
We had survived the darkness. And now, the sun was finally ours.
