Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Mara
I don’t cry easily.
Not anymore.
There was a time when everything made me cry—birthdays, movies, commercials with puppies, even burnt toast if the morning was already bad enough.
But grief rewires you in ways no one warns you about.
After Sam died, tears felt like a luxury I couldn’t afford.
It was either cry or survive, and surviving won. It always wins.
So it throws me off—annoys me, honestly—when I realize my eyes are stinging.
Over a letter.
A letter written more than thirty years ago, before I even existed. From a guy I never heard of and a very young Aunt Lina. Her husband’s name was Mario. Mario Lafferty. And she didn’t meet him until later. She married past her thirtieth birthday, which back then made her almost a spinster.
Once I asked her why she hadn’t married, she said she would only do it for love and love didn’t seem to be in her future. She was okay with that.
But now I’m wondering if love happened to her at a young age and she never thought it could happen again.
I read Thomas’s words, slower this time, letting them seep into the places I keep locked up. The lines where he promises to come back. The part where he says he’s not finished loving her. The part where she wrote the same thing.
It breaks something inside me.
Because love like that. . .
Love that certain . . .
Love that brave . . .
It doesn’t just disappear. It doesn’t vanish without leaving scars.
If they ever found their way back to each other, I would’ve known Thomas. Aunt Lina would’ve talked about him. She wasn’t a woman who kept joy to herself—not the Lina I grew up with.
But she did keep this to herself.
Does that mean he never came back to her?
A cold breath moves through me.
This isn’t just a letter.
This is a promise.
A young man spilling his heart onto paper for a girl who believed the whole universe tilted in his direction.
This isn’t what I expected to find in these boxes.
Old bills? Sure.
Baby pictures? Great—give me all the embarrassing childhood snapshots.
Grocery lists? Fine. Weird, but survivable.
But this?
This shoebox full of love letters between a sixteen-year-old girl and the eighteen-year-old boy sent halfway across the world?
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.
Nope. Not happening.
I decide to forget about the letters—ha, hilarious—and reach for another box, this one marked with a single, very confident V. I tell myself it probably stands for victory or vanished books or something harmless. I could use a book right now. A distraction. A portal to anywhere but here.
Instead, I find vinyl.
Old, dusty, beautifully preserved records.
Of course. Lina always adored music.
And I want to inspect every single one—hold them up to the light, read the notes on the sleeves—but I am not mentally prepared to take another step into her past. Not tonight.
So I carry the box downstairs, cradling it like it might crumble.
I set it on the balcony’s small coffee table.
The night air carries that post–rain coolness that sits on the skin like a sigh.
Lights from the neighboring buildings blur through the mist. Somewhere in this high-rise complex, people are living uncomplicated lives. Lucky them.
I step back inside for a moment and brew myself some tea. By the time I return to the balcony, mug in hand, a sound cuts through the quiet.
The strumming of a guitar.
Slow.
Tentative.
Searching.
And it’s coming from the balcony next door.
Alec.
Of course.
I choose to ignore him. Maybe if I stay on my side and he does the same I don’t have to deal with .
. . him. I know he’s part of my inheritance or whatever but the guy is unpredictable.
He’s growling one moment and the next he’s looking at me like I’m a fragile figurine and he needs to set me in a case so I don’t break.
I’m not fucking breakable, and he has no right to look at me like I’m someone who needs protecting.
And yet . . .
I do appreciate that he took charge of the whole moving-things-around situation—lifting boxes, shifting furniture, setting things where they’d be more suitable without complaint. He saved me from having to deal with my aunt’s belongings when I’m not ready. I’m grateful.
But I hated the way it felt.
Like I mattered.
Like he cared.
Like I—
Nope.
Absolutely not.
I refuse to follow that train of thought to whatever emotionally hazardous destination it’s racing toward.
So I grab my phone and call Ariadne, who has probably assumed I stayed in Portugal out of spite or because I got lost in a vineyard somewhere. Or because I chickened out and ran from whatever my aunt left behind.
It rings twice.
“Ariadne Welsh speaking,” she chirps like she’s answering a call for her law firm instead of her best friend.
“Wow, very professional,” I mock.
“And she lives.” Ariadne gasps dramatically. “Tell me you’re not calling because Mila dyed her hair blue.”
“No,” I say, flopping backward onto the pillows. “But that’s a terrifyingly specific guess.”
“She’s the child of an artist and the niece of a woman who once gave herself bangs with sewing scissors. History repeats itself.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and choose to ignore her conclusion. “I found something.”
“Uh-oh.” A pause. “What kind of something? The good kind? The cursed kind? The ‘burn this before it summons a demon’ kind?” She clears her throat. “Also, where are you? Did you make it to Seattle, or are you secretly in Spain living under an alias?”
“I made it. And I found a shoebox.”
“That tells me nothing, Mara. What’s in it? A finger? A deed to a horse? A secret adoption certificate?”
I swallow. “Letters.”
“Oooh, now I’m intrigued.” I hear her sit up, probably on the edge of her couch. “What kind of letters? And if you start reading me the alphabet, I’m hanging up.”
“No,” I huff. “This is serious.”
To distract myself, I reach into the box beside me and pull out one of the records.
I freeze.
“Oh my God,” I whisper. “I found gold.”
“What? I thought we were talking about letters,” Ariadne says, thoroughly offended. “Now you’re rich?”
“No, listen—original Beatles vinyl. Revolver. And it’s in good condition.”
Ariadne gasps like I’ve just revealed state secrets. “Okay, okay, I take back everything I said. You keep that thing safe and guarded like it’s your second child.”
I’m about to answer Ariadne when Alec—my very charming and medically allergic-to-joy neighbor—finally stops strumming whatever off-key nonsense he’s torturing that guitar with and actually speaks.
“Don’t you know the meaning of silence?” he calls out, voice dry enough to sand wood.
“Yes, of course I do,” I fire back, turning toward his balcony before my brain can stop me.
And there he is.