Epilogue: The Garden of Scars

Epilogue: The Garden of Scars

Time flies with astonishing speed in the north. My children grew up surrounded by wild nature and, above all, full of a love so immense that it overflowed the walls of our shelter. Since I had adamantly refused to leave the house with the green roofs—my first true home—Ethan, with his trademark protective stubbornness, did not insist on us moving. Instead, he hired local carpenters and expanded the traditional cabin, extending the wooden rooms toward the hillside to make room for what was coming. And life had one last surprise in store for us: two more little ones were on their way.

The triplets, Eatha, Finn and Aodh, are now three years old. They are real earthquakes that fill the corridors with the echo of their laughter and their barefoot scamming. Now, with the blessing and arrival of the twins, our legacy is officially over. The house is full of toys, diapers, crying and lullabies, but above all, life. I can no longer ask God for anything else. I hold in my arms everything I ever wanted and once thought forbidden to me: a noisy, chaotic family full of real love. It has not been a rosy road; raising five children in the north of Iceland is a monumental physical challenge, but I am immensely happy and fulfilled. Ethan has been, without a doubt, the best companion that life could have given me.

A few days ago, while I was resting in my studio taking advantage of the silence of the children's nap, I checked our social networks and the publisher's reports. I heard some news that filled my soul: the novel I wrote on that oak desk, our story, has become one of the best-selling and most read works. My chest swelled with pride, and not because of the monetary benefit or the zeros in the bank account – I have already learned that it is worthless – but because I know for sure that there are thousands of women out there who are suffering, or who have suffered in silence, in exactly the same way that I suffered. Knowing that my words serve as a beacon in the midst of their own storm is the real success of my career.

The internet also brought me a distant echo of the past. Through mutual acquaintances, I learned about Anthony's reality. The younger woman, the one for whom he discarded me as if I were garbage after fifteen years of sacrifices, left him without looking back. She left him for a devastating reason: they discovered that he could not have children. The excuses he gave me during our marriage, that hurtful "it's not time yet," were only the mask of his own inability. In the end, he reaped exactly what he sowed; He was left alone, trapped in the same coldness with which he treated me.

I look out the window of my study. The Akureyri sun slowly sets behind the mountains, dyeing the fjord purple and orange. I hear Ethan's heavy footsteps in the living room, lighting the fireplace, and the babbling of the twins beginning to wake up. This has been my story. A journey that began in the heartbreak of a divorce, that crossed the ocean to find a mystical reunion on a beach in Norway, and that blossomed in a mature, loyal and eternal love under the Icelandic sky. My scars are still there, drawn on my skin and in my memory, but they no longer hurt. Now I know that they were just the marks needed to remind me that I managed to survive and learn to rewrite my own destiny.