My mother always said, "Anna, never burn a bridge because you never know when you may need to use it to cross somewhere again."

She was right.

When I returned to England one of the first things I did was go to her grave and tell her that. And tell her all the good things too. I couldn't leave those out. I shouldn't leave those out.

The good things are what made it all worthwhile.

I left England with a baby, no husband, a horrible trail of gossip and the vague promise of a life in a country so far away I could barely comprehend that I would circle the globe to get there. I took my child, the child I didn't know I wanted until they placed him in my arms, and crossed myself while thinking I would probably die.

But perhaps that was better than what I was leaving.

And it was. Every gritty, uncomfortable, harrowing moment of it was better than what I left. For what is life without opposition? What is pain without the promise of pleasure? And what was experience but the teacher that had me ready to wait for the joys that now fill my days?

My John. The John who gave me a home in a new land. The John would gave me a job when he owed me nothing. The John who loved me when he was not supposed to and continued loving me until he could for the world to see. The John who taught me how to love. The John who loved my son, a boy who was not his, and gave him a future. The John who gave my son a title, a home, and a chance in a world that otherwise would've rejected him. The John who loved me… and gave me another son.

That John's different. He's got his father's hair and brooding nature. But he laughs easily, smiles like me, and has my eyes. His father's proud of those eyes. The eyes all of our children have. The eyes, he says, that he fell in love with first.

I boarded a boat to a foreign land to give my son a better life. And now we give both of our sons, and our two daughters, a better life together. We live in the happiness we wrought together through hardship, pain, and suffering to find the joy we now share. The joy he gave me.

Even though our family's grown now and James returned to India to work at the Embassy with his commission, I still feel it. The thrill I had when I first met John. The thrill he gave me as we loved in secret, in the open, and for the rest of our lives. The thrill of watching our children grow and take on the world before them with confidence and joy because John gave it to me and I could now give it to them.

I traveled to India to find a world far from my own because mine had become a stranger to me. A world where no one looked twice at us outside of our skin. A world where we started anew and pretended, for awhile, we weren't the people who left England. Those people stayed in India, I think.

Other people came back to England in their place.

It was so far away. It wasn't anything I knew. And I liked it that way. But this life, the one that has me curled before a fire with the man I love most as our children live their best lives… that's the world I love.

And I like it better in every way.