Epilogue
AURELIA
Every house holds a memory, and Rosewood Residence holds nightmares. Isn’t that how the story is supposed to go? But not every nightmare is bad. Some carry something inside them. A sliver of hope that after a bad dream, a good one still comes.
Nathaniel and I decide to part with this place now that we’ve left everything behind us.
I lower my hand to my stomach.
Now that our daughter is on the way.
We come back to pack everything and load the truck that will take all our things to Salem, Massachusetts. We bought a new house with a touch similar to this one, only far from the worst of the memories.
We didn’t sell this one. We decided to keep it, just in case we change our minds, but I’m pretty sure once our little one arrives, we’ll have to make something permanent.
If you had asked me before where I saw myself in ten years, I would’ve told you I’d be traveling the world, maybe visiting Paris, playing piano near the Eiffel Tower in some fancy restaurant.
But now I see myself in a new house, with my future husband and my daughter, and I will make sure her life is never anything like mine.
I move to the bed, exhaling deeply as my palm slides to my lower back, holding myself together. Sometimes I wonder how I’m still able to walk.
Little one is heavier than I ever expected her to be.
I take a notebook from the plastic bag I left on the bed, then reach for the pen in the drawer where I left it exactly eight months ago, and open to a fresh page.
On the front, I write L. R.
I guess I wanted to leave something behind. I always thought L.R. stood for Lilibeth Rosewood, but maybe it was always meant to be Lady of the Rosewood.
I press the pen to the page and start to write. Every single word that comes to mind. Everything that happened, everything I remember, everything I never said to anyone else.
Halfway through, I hear Nathaniel shout, “We’re leaving in five minutes.”
“Coming,” I call back.
I close the diary and move to the closet, leaving the notebook on top, in the same place Lilibeth left hers. As I turn, I notice the two chestnut dolls by the window, but they aren’t inside anymore. They’re outside the glass now.
I guess even ghosts move on, once some stories find their ending.
As I head downstairs, I let my hand trail along the railing, my palm gliding over the wood. Somehow, this house grew on me. I loved every ruined piece of it, but like some people, it needed its goodbye.
I move down the staircase and walk outside. The truck is already halfway down the road, carrying our things away.
Nathaniel opens the door for me, and as I settle into the seat, I slide the red heart-shaped sunglasses onto my face. I look at him while he turns on “Tears in Heaven.”
The song used to taste like grief, like everything I lost on the night it played. Now it means something else, too.
“Ready?” he asks, resting his palm on my thigh.
I just nod, smiling as he drives away.
When I glance into the rearview mirror, I see Viviane and Lily standing in front of the house, their hands lifting in a silent goodbye before they fade with it.
Some endings are just endings. Not happy, not sad, just endings.
Because that’s what an ending is. Something closes so something else can begin.
And this chapter doesn’t start with a call someone shouldn’t answer.
It starts with a diary. With the truth. Because no matter how many stories you hear, how many stories you read, only one person ever knows the truth, and it’s the one who lived through it and stayed alive long enough to tell it.
Some truths are worth believing simply because everyone lies, and in the end, if there’s one thing you can’t bury forever, it’s the truth.