Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 77120 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77120 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Where Henry is now, drinking coffee and looking all too fresh and handsome for this early hour.
He takes a last gulp of coffee and rises. “I’m off,” he says. “Got an appointment.”
“This morning?” Marjorie asks. “On a Saturday? Your sister’s wedding day?”
“I’ll be back in time for everything,” he says.
And he leaves, not even looking at me once.
Thirty
Henry
I sip my coffee, staring out Aunt Melanie’s kitchen window at the dry hills warming under the morning sun. Everything feels too quiet after last night—the laughter, the music, the thousand eyes on me like I didn’t kill a man a few months ago. Like I’m not still unraveling.
It’s weird how the planet keeps spinning even when you’re trapped in the same moment, reliving it over and over again. I mean, logically, I get that’s what happens, but it’s still jarring that people are celebrating a damned wedding when I’m still moving past something that happened months ago.
My aunt sets her mug down across from me. Her silver hair is pulled back, and she’s still in her robe, just kindness and too much knowing in her eyes.
“You didn’t sleep,” she says.
I shake my head. “Didn’t even try.”
She nods like she expected that. She’s a trauma psychiatrist. She always expects that.
I toy with the rim of my mug. “Can I ask you something? Not as my aunt, but like…as a professional.”
“You can ask me anything, but I’ll always answer as both,” she says.
I lean back, forcing out a breath. “Do you think it’s stupid I’ve been thinking about finding her?”
She doesn’t ask who I mean. She knows.
“My birth mother,” I add anyway, because the words feel too heavy just sitting in my chest. “Francine.”
She tilts her head. “No.”
“I haven’t thought about her in years.” I stare down at my hands. “But after everything—after what I did—it’s like something cracked open. And now she’s in there. This ache I can’t ignore.”
“She was never a part of your life.”
“She was, though. She left. That’s still a part, however small.”
Silence settles between us for a moment.
“I love Mom. I mean—my real mom. Your sister-in-law. She adopted me, and she raised me. She’s mine. I don’t want to take anything away from her by feeling this.”
“You’re not,” Aunt Melanie replies. “You’re just human. You’re grieving.”
“Grieving what?” I snap, not angry at her, just…tired. “A woman who didn’t want me?”
“Grieving the idea that she might have,” she says quietly. “Because of what you’ve been through. Grieving the version of your story where she stayed. That kind of grief doesn’t need logic. It just needs space.”
I press my palms against my face. “I keep telling myself she should stay where she is. In the past. In the dark. But I know I won’t leave her there.”
“And what are you hoping to find if you don’t?”
I shrug. “Something. Anything. Maybe a reason. Maybe just her face.”
She frowns. “Would finding her make you feel more whole? Or are you looking for someone to blame?”
I let that sit. It hits too close.
“I think…” I swallow. “I don’t know. I feel so empty lately, and I know it’s a reaction to the trauma. I just want to stop feeling like a ghost of something I never got to be. A son. A boy she kept.”
“You’re already a son,” she says. “You were raised with love, and you’re still surrounded by it.” She leans back in her chair, crosses her legs. “But if part of you needs to see her to move forward, then see her. Just don’t expect her to fill the hole. That’s yours. And only you get to decide how it heals.”
I stare into my mug, the steam long gone. “Would it be selfish to find her?”
“No,” she says softly. “It would be honest.”
And for the first time in weeks, I think maybe I’m allowed to want that.
She watches me for a moment, her expression unreadable, fingers curled around her mug. Then she leans forward slightly.
“Look,” she says, “I’m not going to stop you from finding her. If that’s what you need, then do it. But I have to be honest with you.”
I brace myself. “Go ahead.”
“She’s not the answer,” my aunt says. “Even if you find her. Even if she’s sorry. Even if she cries and tells you she thought about you every single day—none of that will solve what’s breaking open in you right now.”
My throat tightens. “You think I’m broken?”
She gives me a soft, knowing smile. “I think you’re hurting. Deeply. And you have every reason to be. You took a life. You saved your sister and her fiancé. The man she’s marrying this afternoon. You’re carrying more weight than most people can fathom. But what you’re searching for… That sense of peace? Of wholeness? That doesn’t come from tracking down your past.” She taps her chest. “It has to come from in here. From facing what you’ve done, from forgiving yourself—not just for pulling the trigger but for being the man who would always pull it to protect someone he loves.”