Chapter 25
Words She'll Never Speak Aloud
I t started with a blank page. A soft cotton sheet of stationery, tucked inside the drawer of her bedside table—the one Nate hadn’t opened in years.
Lila stared at it for a long while, fingers curled lightly around the pen.
Her hands trembled—not from fear, not even from pain.
But from the weight of what she had decided to do.
She wasn’t writing for today. She was writing for the time when she would no longer be here. She pressed the tip of the pen to the page and started with Ava.
My dearest Ava,
I don’t know when you’ll read this. Maybe too soon. Maybe much later. But whenever you do, I want you to remember that I loved you before I even held you. Before you had a name, you were already the center of my world.
You were my first lesson in patience and my first proof of magic. You taught me how to be brave simply by needing me.
I’m sorry that I won’t be there for all the moments I dreamed of. Your first heartbreak, your graduation, the way your hands might tremble when you one day hold your own child. I wanted to see it all.
But what I want more is for you to grow up knowing how fiercely you were loved. How deeply I believed in you. And how your heart—so big, so tender—is your strength, not your weakness.
If you ever doubt yourself, remember this: you come from a line of women who endured. And you, my Ava, will rise from anything.
Love always,
Mom
She placed the letter into an envelope, sealed it with shaking fingers, and wrote Ava’s name on the front. She didn't cry. The tears would come later. She turned the page and began again, this time for her son.
My sweet Caleb,
You’ve always been quiet. You keep so much inside that sometimes I worry the world won’t know how bright you are. But I do. I always have.
Even as a baby, you held my gaze like you already understood more than you were letting on. And maybe you did. Maybe you still do.
I hope when you read this, you are older. I hope you’ve grown into the boy who hugs his sister first and argues second. I hope you know it’s okay to feel everything—anger, sadness, confusion—and to talk about it.
I hope you know I never wanted to leave you.
But if I do, and when I do, I want you to keep going. To find something that lights you up and chase it without apology.
Protect your sister. Forgive your father.
And know that my love for you was constant. Even when I was tired. Even when I was sick. Even when I wasn’t strong enough to say it out loud.
You were never hard to love.
Love,
Mom
She folded the letters and placed them inside a wooden box, one she had kept from her own mother. There was room for more inside. And there would be more.
Letters for birthdays, for heartbreaks, for weddings she would not attend.
But tonight, she had written enough. The pain had returned in waves.
Not just in her body, but in her bones—in the aching knowledge that her children would grow up remembering pieces of her, not the whole.
Still, it gave her peace to know her voice would not disappear with her body. She would speak to them through paper, through ink, through memory.
Even when Nate could not give them the truth, she would.
Nate
He came home late. Lila was already asleep—or pretending to be. The lights were off, the room thick with silence.
He undressed quietly, guilt gnawing at the back of his mind for no particular reason. Just a dull awareness that he was never here when he should be.
That something was off.
He looked at her in bed, the curve of her back under the blanket, the way she curled in on herself like something trying to disappear.
He didn’t know what she was thinking. He never asked. But something inside him whispered: She’s slipping away and he didn’t know if that meant emotionally or physically.
He just knew it was happening and he still couldn’t stop himself from seeing Camille the next night.