Chapter 1: The Girl Who Brought Light

When my wife married me, she was only seventeen.

On our wedding night, she crouched beside my wheelchair, her eyes wide with curiosity. "How do you hide that pocket knife? Why do you have so many scars on your hands? Are your legs really broken? Can you still feel anything below the waist? Can you still... you know, do stuff? Like, with your wife?"

Her questions tumbled out, honest and unfiltered—the kind only a teenager raised in a close-knit American town might ask, curiosity outweighing caution in the face of something unknown. I caught the scent of her shampoo—fresh and citrusy, like something you’d find on the bottom shelf at a rural Walmart. I wondered if she realized how out of place she looked, all sunshine and questions, in this house built for secrets.

She just kept talking, her voice breaking through the cold silence that had always filled this big old house.

Her words echoed off the old wood paneling and high ceilings, weaving through the dusty light and the cracks in the floorboards. For the first time in years, the house didn’t feel like a mausoleum.

And somehow, she woke up a soul I thought had gone numb.

Something about her energy—so alive, so irrepressibly American—reminded me what it was to be young and hopeful. It was as if a window finally cracked open after a long winter.