Chapter 51
Fifty-One
These four walls feel different. Last time I was here, Carson held me while I came undone over Bryce. Thirteen days ago, but it feels like a lifetime has passed by.
I never really lived in this room. When I first came to Grove it was empty space. Over the weeks it became crowded—with shadows and nights too heavy to carry. Cutting that first line on the bedside table. Choking awake after half-sleeps. Taking scissors to my hair just to feel less trapped.
I never really tried, I guess. To get better. I just wanted to bury my head in the sand, so far deep I couldn’t even think about all that I’d lost.
I don’t know how to outpace the bad habits here. It’s classical conditioning, right? A place tied to patterns, to pain. And I feel it. The way old versions of me lurk in corners, whispering how easy it would be to slip again. To undo the progress I’ve bled for.
My suitcase slumps by the door. I should unpack. Everything inside it is a mess, jammed in by shaking hands and the fear that if I didn’t leave then, I never would. I’d have given in. To what Carson wanted. To what I want.
God, it feels like a losing game I’m playing here. I sink onto the bed, palms dragging over my face.
The sting comes unmistakable in my eyes, but I don’t let it break me. Maybe in a week I’ll cry. Maybe then I’ll be steady enough to catch myself.
A hinge sighs open. I jolt, snapping my head toward the sound.
Familiar eyes meet mine. Green. Glassy. Startled.
For a long moment, she only stares, caught.
Then, finally, she breathes, “Sorry…” She raises a hand. “I was just returning this.”
A photo book.
I recognise it instantly. How can I not? But the last time I saw it, it was buried in the bottom of a suitcase. The engraving B2 glints under the weak light, and all that leaves me is a measly, “Oh.”
She slips in, letting the door click shut behind her. Her hands hover over the photo book, as if it offers a shield from what’s in front of her.
“I didn’t know you were back…” Her glance hooks on the suitcase. “Are you staying? Or just… picking things up?” There’s a hint of hope, but I can’t figure which option she’s wishing for.
“Staying.”
Her shoulders ease a fraction.
The former, then.
“Can I—can I sit?”
What does she think I’m going to say? No?
She perches on the edge of the bed like she’s afraid to disturb the room itself. She looks small. Smaller than I ever remember. I wonder if she thinks the same about me.
The quiet swells, filling every corner. I don’t break it. Don’t have the words, anyway. Not after everything that went down.
The things I threw at her sit dense in the gap between us. The Xanax. Katy. Her calling me Bryce.
Maybe that’s why I’ve got nothing left to give. I already said my piece. When all was said and done, it was her that didn’t give anything back. For a second, I think maybe this is it. That we’re just going to sit here in that echo.
She proves otherwise. “You started therapy.”
It’s not a question. But it hangs like one.
I nod.
“That’s good. Thats… really good. How is it going?”
I say nothing. I can’t. Not after the last session—after the aftermath of it. It’s too raw, like someone reached inside the whole damn system. I’ll need more than just an hour to breathe through it.
Thankfully, she doesn’t press. Maybe she senses the tremble beneath my quiet.
“We started too. Your father and I. Therapy.” I glance over. That alone catches me off guard, but what she says next has triple the impact, cleaving straight through me. “I’m also checking into a two week detox centre.”
“For the Xanax?”
She flinches from how rapid it leaves me.
“Yes.”
“When?”
No answer. But it’s an answer all the same.
My shoulders sag. Half-baked promises. Carson told me all about them, the kind his mom used to spin with promises of better days.
“Brielle.”
The sound of my name guts me. Tender and so unexpected. I barely register her hand coming to rest on my forearm.
“We haven’t set a date because we’ve been waiting.”
Waiting?
Her mouth trembles at the corners. For the first time, I notice how much older she looks. The exhaustion that makeup can’t disguise.
“I didn’t want to be gone if you needed me, and then didn’t know where I was.”
My already-cracked heart splinters further. It’s the most honest thing she’s said to me since Bryce died. Maybe that’s why I manage something just as honest, even if it guts me open.
“I’ve needed you all this time, Mom.”
Her face crumples, and that’s when I realise the shine in her eyes isn’t new, it’s leftover. Tears she’s already shed, now spilling back in full force. She clutches the photo book like a lifeline and nods, quick, desperate.
“I know. I know.” Regret. It’s soaked in it.
She swipes at her cheeks, then locks back on me.
“I’m sorry, Brielle. I mean it. Words and actions will never measure up to how sorry we—your father and I—both are.
” Her hand reaches for mine. I let her take it, but my other fists the bedspread.
“We should have been there. We should have held you closer instead of letting you drift. I could pile on every excuse we thought we had… but none of them would be right. It was wrong.”
It’s too much. This, today—everything—it’s too much. The emotions slam inside me, edges clashing until I can’t tell what’s bleeding and what’s healing. Bitterness rises inside, more potent than I expected. It would be so easy to drown in it, to let it pull me under.
But I know what guilt tastes like. I’ve swallowed enough of it to name every note. And now, I see that same flavor reflected in my mother’s eyes.
If Bryce can smile at me in a dream and give me the grace I don’t believe I deserve, maybe I can try to do the same. Not yet. Not all at once. But eventually.
“This detox thing… you really will try?”
“I promise. The moment you walked out, I flushed every pill.”
“Okay,” I breathe. Okay. That’s all I have to give right now.
I figure that’s all she has left in her, too. That maybe she’ll stand, pat my hand to seal the fragile truce, and leave.
She doesn’t.
“Your friends… they’re good to you?”
It hits like an arrow straight to my chest. “Yes.” So good.
“What are their names?”
She never asked before. Last time we sat here, in this same air heavy with unspoken tension, she let the mention of friends drift by like it was safer not to know.
“Aspen. Dylan. Reese.” Three people I’ve come to love fiercely.
But there’s a fourth. We both know it, yet she doesn’t call me out on it.
“I know I said we should invite them for dinner but I mean it now. I’d love to meet them. To thank them.”
“Yeah.” It leaves thinner than I want. “We can. Just… not now.”
My chin trembles despite me trying to lock it down.
I’m scared.
Of what comes next.
Of how everything might shift now.
Of the possibility of walking this road alone.
As I fold in on myself, my mother keeps watching. She doesn’t miss the parts I try to hide, and when her voice comes, it’s proof she’s seen every mismatch.
“Oh, Brielle.” Her eyes tick like she’s tracing a thread she already knows the shape of. “You love him, don’t you?”
Him. She doesn’t even have to say his name.
And I don’t have to answer. My face does it for me.
“Come here, baby.” Her arms open, and before I can second-guess it, I fall into her hold. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world. It was, once upon a time.
And I know I just told myself I wouldn’t cry, but the second her hands find my hair and she strokes it the way she did after swim lessons, when the world was too big and I was still small enough to fold into her lap, I can’t stop myself.
I’m weak. Weak-willed, and just weak. Only now do I realise how much I’ve missed this.
“It’s okay, Bri,” she whispers, same as she did back then. “You’re going to be okay. I’m here, and I’m not going to stop being here, I promise.”
The sob that spills is ugly, months in the making. It rips through me as I press into her shoulder, tears spilling in a flood I can’t stop. I cling like the girl I once was, small enough to believe she’d always be there.
“It’s okay.” Her lips tremble against my hair. “Let it all out, baby.”
So I do.
For Bryce. For Carson. For the pills. For every night I thought I wouldn’t make it. For every moment I felt alone.
When I finally find my voice, it‘s hoarser than ever. “I love him, Mom.” I love him so much and I’m terrified.
She rocks me like he did on his deck, and that terrifies me too. Because I keep thinking that was the last hug I’ll ever get from him. The way he walked away… it felt final.
Like a door closing forever.
But maybe it isn’t.
“He loves you too, Bri,” she says, certainty cutting through me like light.
Her hand cradles my head. “I saw it. That kind of love, the kind that makes a boy stand in the rain for hours because he can’t bear not knowing if you’re safe, it doesn’t fade.
It doesn’t just vanish.” She runs comforting strokes down my hair.
“Love like that… if it’s meant to be, it will always find its way back. ”
Two hours later, and we’re still here. Sat on the bed, but now there’s three of us.
“I remember that one.” My father points, his eyes rimmed red. A broken laugh accompanies the story—how the grill caught fire and Bryce doubled over laughing, then teased him about it for weeks.
The photo book lies open between us. Her book. The one I’ve avoided since she died. She made it for me, section by section—me, us, family, even my photography. On the backs she left little messages of love stitched into paper.
I haven’t flipped any over. I’m not ready to read her voice yet. They do, sometimes. Careful, like they don’t want me to notice. But I do, and it’s okay; they respect it when I say I’m not ready.
So I just look. For now the front of the photos are enough. Enough to split me open, enough to remind me what it felt like to belong to something whole.
Maybe that’s the ache of it—seeing her alive on these pages while we sit here, learning how to live without her. Under the ache something softer brews, though. A whisper that if we keep turning pages together, maybe we’re not as lost as we thought.