Two years later, Wesley and Poppy joined Eleanor every Sunday around the same kitchen table where the painful text had arrived. Eleanor used the good china for all three of them because she had stopped reserving her best things for people whose approval she feared losing. When Wesley asked why she had waited fifteen years, she admitted that after Arthur died, being needed had felt close enough to being loved to fill the silence. Wesley promised she would always have a seat at his table, and for three years he kept that promise. Eleanor still stores the old financial records in one folder, but beside it sits another filled with photographs, drawings, and cards freely given. One folder shows what dependence cost her; the other shows what love looks like when no payment is required.