The Sound of Forever

Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Keane

Day Twenty-Five

My mother died a couple of years after the accident that left me in a coma. Four years later, and it feels like I’m only just beginning to acknowledge her absence—not just her death, but the tangled mess of everything left unresolved between us. I can’t stop wondering: if I’d woken up sooner, would things have been different? Could we have stopped circling each other, stopped sizing each other up like adversaries in a battle neither of us knew how to win?

She was a hovering force my entire life and yet, she neglected me. She liked control. A control Rowan didn’t bend to, but I did. He never cared about earning her approval, her love. I craved it. I wanted to believe it was possible. I wanted to believe a better version of her was possible. She tried to make sure I stayed in line—her line.

And with Ophelia? She hated her. Mother despised what we had. She tore at us with words designed to break, calling her names that still burn in the corners of my memory. When Philly told me she was pregnant, my mother twisted it into a weapon. Claimed the baby wasn’t mine.

But I knew the truth. I knew. And still, I tried to keep my mother happy, to calm her, to keep the peace in a war that could never be won. It was a constant battle between her expectations and my reality, and the only casualty in that war was Philly.

Philly, who gave and gave while I stood there, too afraid to draw a line, too afraid to lose my mother’s approval. All I ever gave her were excuses and apologies. Philly deserved more—more than me, more than this mess I handed her and called a life.

And now, my mother’s gone. No final words, no closure, just this hollow space where the fight used to live.

Would it have been better? Would she have finally accepted Philly, the baby . . . me? Or would we have just found new ways to tear each other apart?

Rowan refuses to tell me what happened between Mom and Philly while I was unconscious. He says it’s not worth dredging up, that it won’t change anything now. But isn’t that the worst part? The not knowing? The wondering. The regret.

The therapist says I have to decide if the truth matters to me—if I need to dig it up, hold it in my hands, and make peace with it. They say this process is about facing reality, about learning how to carry it instead of letting it crush me.

But am I brave enough to ask Rowan? Am I brave enough to confront the only person I have left in this world? Or will I stay here, trapped in the questions I’m too afraid to answer?