I overheard my husband giving my daughter $100 to “keep a secret” — and nothing about it felt right. The next day, she looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Mom… you need to know the truth.”

People liked to say Maine was a good place to start over.

I used to laugh whenever I heard that.

“Sure,” I’d mutter, folding discount-store towels at midnight after my second shift. “If by start over, you mean freeze half to death and cry in your car behind the grocery store.”

That was before Daniel. By the time he came into our lives, I had already learned how to survive on almost nothing.

My mother had run off with my fiancé when my daughter was still in diapers. Yes. My mother. My fiancé.

I can still see myself standing in our tiny kitchen, baby on my hip, reading that note for the fifth time as if the words might rearrange into something less disgusting. They didn’t.

So I did what women do when no one comes to save them. I kept going. I worked two shifts most days.

Mornings at a diner, evenings stocking shelves.

I left Lila with Mrs. Grant next door and paid her what I could. Sometimes cash. Sometimes I brought home leftover turkey sandwiches or soup cups from the diner.