Page 37 of Never After Us
This is ...something else entirely.
“Okay,” I whisper, pressing my palms into my thighs.“Okay, wow.This is too much for my second day trying to decide what I’m supposed to do with my life.”
This whole should-I-stay-or-should-I-go thing is turning into a full-on get the hell out before the universe hands you another heartbreak.I keep trying to be brave for Mila, for myself, for this next chapter Aunt Lina somehow orchestrated from beyond the grave.
But the truth hits me in a place I don’t want to examine:
I’d already lost my aunt long before she died.
She’d pulled away from all of us.Slowly.Quietly.Not with coldness—just distance.A distance I never questioned because Mom insisted it was “for the best.”It never felt right.There was so much happening to us back then, so much unraveling in our family, and ...
I stop myself.
Because the last thing I need right now is to lose everything I’ve built over the past five years.
I repeat my mantra under my breath, the one I stitched together when everything fell apart:
“I’m a strong, independent woman who doesn’t need anyone and is here to raise a strong, self-reliant child.”
Except—how am I supposed to live by that when I’ve just discovered these letters ...these secrets ...this side of Lina I never saw?
The boxes tower around me, cardboard cliffs casting long lines across the floor.I stare at them and wonder how many lives she folded into these squares.How many stories she tucked between linens or stacked beneath old clothes.How many truths she slid into envelopes or pressed flat between tissue paper and receipts from grocery runs decades ago.
It feels like I’m intruding.
Like I’ve crept into a past that never belonged to me.
But at the same time, this—this quiet excavation—is part of the leaving she never prepared me for.Part of the unwinding.Part of the process she built in her own cryptic way, expecting me to piece it together as I decide whether to stay or go.
And maybe—just maybe—it’s a chance to walk away without shattering what’s left of my heart.
Except ...I’m not sure how much heart I even have left for whatever is happening here.
I tell myself I’m okay.
I tell myself I’m strong.
And the thing is—I am.
But I also can’t stop.
I close the letter gently, sliding it back into the shoebox like it’s something sacred.For a moment, I feel like I’ve stepped through a doorway I had no right to open—like I’m trespassing inside someone’s memory.
And guilt prickles beneath my skin.
I should call someone.
Someone who knew Lina better than I did.
Someone who could tell me if this is normal or if I’ve accidentally unearthed the romantic equivalent of a family landmine.
That someone should be Mom.
But calling her would mean admitting I’m close, that I’m here, that I’m unraveling all over again.She’ll offer to come—after I pay for her ticket—to support me.Honestly, it’d be a nice gesture that I can’t handle right now.So I won’t do it.
At least, not tonight.
Not when everything is already stacked so high on my shoulders I can barely breathe.
