CHAPTER 17 Delia
Delia
His texts came every day. Sometimes twice a day.
Axel
Thinking of you.
I’m here when you’re ready.
I read them. Every single one. Then I put my phone face down and hated myself a little more.
Because I was hurting him. I knew I was hurting him. And the worst part was I couldn’t stop.
The guilt had teeth. It lived in my chest and fed on every memory of happiness.
I painted nothing. The canvases stared at me accusingly from where they leaned against the walls. I’d tried once, about two weeks ago. Had picked up a brush, squeezed out paint, stood in front of a blank canvas.
My hand wouldn’t move. My brain wouldn’t connect to my fingers. I’d stood there for an hour before giving up and going back to the couch.
That’s where I spent most of my time. Lying on the couch staring at the ceiling, surrounded by the faint smell of Axel’s cologne. Even if I couldn’t bring myself to see him, I could allow myself this much.
Maria’s call came on a Thursday morning.
“Delia, sweetheart. We need to talk about the house.”
I didn’t move. “What about it?”
“We need to sort your mother’s things. Daniel and I have been putting it off but keeping everything exactly as she left it isn’t healthy. For any of us.”
“You want to pack up her stuff,” I said stiffly.
“I want to help you both move forward. That means going through her belongings. Deciding what to keep, what to donate.” Her voice was gentle. “I know it’s hard. But it needs to be done.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. And you will. Because staying frozen isn’t honoring her memory. It’s just avoiding the pain.” She paused. “Saturday. Ten a.m. Be there.”
She hung up before I could argue.
Saturday came with the kind of sunny weather that contrasted painfully with the cold gloom in my heart. Like the universe was mocking me. It was saying; look how beautiful the world is while you’re falling apart.
I stood outside the house trying to remember how to breathe normally. The lawn needed mowing. The mailbox was overflowing. The wreath Mom had hung on the door months ago was still there, faded and sad.
Inside was worse.
Everything was exactly as she’d left it. Daniel was already there, standing in the middle of the living room looking lost. He’d aged since the funeral—new lines around his eyes, gray at his temples that seemed to have appeared overnight. He looked like he’d been sleeping as poorly as I had.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
We stood there in our mother’s house surrounded by her absence and neither of us knew what to say.
Maria appeared from the kitchen with garbage bags and boxes. “Let’s start with the bedroom. It’ll be easier than the common spaces.”
Nothing about this was going to be easy.
Mom’s bedroom smelled like her perfume. The same one she’d worn my entire life. Floral and warm and so perfectly her that I had to grip the doorframe to stay upright.
Her bed was made—hospital corners, perfect, like she’d be coming back any minute to mess it up again.
We started with the closet. Maria pulled out clothes while Daniel and I sorted them into piles. Keep. Donate. Trash.
Most of it went to donate. Teaching clothes. Casual outfits. Dresses she’d worn to school events. All of it too full of her to keep, but too impersonal to matter.
Then Maria pulled out the dress Mom had worn to my college graduation. Blue. Her favorite color.
I took it and held it against my chest and couldn’t let go.
“Keep pile,” Daniel said quietly.
I folded it carefully. Set it aside with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking.
We worked in silence. Maria directed. Daniel followed instructions and I moved through everything like I was underwater. The world felt distant. Muffled.
At the back of the closet, tucked behind shoe boxes and old purses, Maria found a jewelry box.
Wooden. Carved. Beautiful in that way antique things were.
“Her mother’s,” Maria said. “Your grandmother’s. Elena always kept her important things in here.”
She handed it to me.
The box was heavier than I expected. I sat on Mom’s bed and opened it carefully.
Jewelry. Most of it costume. A few real pieces. Rings and necklaces and earrings I remembered her wearing. Things that smelled like her perfume and looked like her hands.
At the bottom, underneath everything else, was an envelope.
Cream colored. My name written on the front in Mom’s handwriting.
“What is it?” Daniel asked.
“I don’t know.”
My hands were shaking so hard I almost tore it opening it. Inside was a journal.
Leather-bound, worn, filled with Mom’s handwriting.
“She kept a journal,” Maria said softly. “To help remember. To fight the disease.”
I opened to the first page.
If I’m reading this, I’m already forgetting. So here’s what I need to remember: I’m Elena Santoro. I have three children—Daniel, Delia. And Axel. A husband named Miguel who I love more than life.
My vision went blurry.
I flipped through pages. The early entries were clear. Her daily observations, memories she was afraid would disappear. Recipes. Stories about her childhood.
Then the entries became fragmented—shorter, more desperate.
I forgot Daniel’s birthday. Remembered at midnight. Called him crying.
I made Miguel’s favorite dinner. He’s been dead for three years. I forgot.
Delia came to visit. My daughter. I knew her name. Small victories.
Each entry was a window into Mom’s mind as it fractured. As she fought to stay herself while she lost piece by piece.
Daniel sat beside me. He read over my shoulder. We didn’t speak. Just read and cried on Mom’s bed while Maria quietly continued packing.
“I’ll get you water,” Daniel said. He walked away, but a part of me knew he was looking for somewhere private to break down.
I kept reading mom’s words.
Midway through the journal, an entry stopped me completely.
Found letters today. In Axel’s old room. I was rearranging it. The letters tucked behind the loose board in his closet.
Love letters. To Delia. From Axel. Years’ worth. Starting when he was fourteen.
No. That couldn’t be right.
I read them. I shouldn’t have but I did. Love that was patient, terrified, and genuine. He wrote about watching her paint. About how she refused to let him hide. About loving her since he was fourteen and not knowing what to do with it.
I don’t know what to do with this. Axel barely comes home anymore. I understand why now. Delia is with Jake. I don’t like Jake but she seems happy.
Next page.
Tell Delia about the letters. Soon. Before I forget. She needs to know Axel loved her first. Loved her longest.
My hands were shaking so hard I almost dropped the journal.
Next entry. Shakier handwriting.
Forgot to tell Delia. Remembered today. Will call her.
I need to tell Delia that someone built an empire thinking of her. She needs to know.
I couldn’t breathe. My tears kept falling—ragged, ugly—as everything in my chest broke loose.
The letters my mother had been trying to tell me about at that dinner. When she’d been confused, calling Axel “Jake.” She’d been trying to tell me about love letters. About Axel. About seventeen years of loving me quietly.
How could he love me for this long? Why had I never seen it?
I flipped faster now. Desperate.
I called Delia. I told her I had something important to tell her. She said tomorrow.
Oh god.
A sob strangled in my throat as I read the next line.
Tomorrow. I need to remember until tomorrow.
Near the end. In a handwriting I could barely read. It said;
If I die before I tell her: Axel loves her. Has always loved her.
The last entry was dated a few hours before she fell.
I made a sound—a horrible, broken noise that came from somewhere deep in my chest.
My mother had known something I hadn’t. She’d been trying to tell me for years.
And that last phone call, that last clear day when she’d said she had something important to tell me.
This. She’d wanted to tell me this.
About Axel. About the letters. About love that had been waiting while I’d been looking everywhere else.
“Delia?” Daniel’s voice sounded far away. He stood on the door way, a bottle of water in his hand.
“What’s wrong?” He asked again.
I couldn’t answer. The sobs were coming faster now. Hard and ugly and unstoppable. I pressed the journal against my chest and cried.
All this time. All these years. Axel had loved me while I’d been invisible to everyone else. While I’d never noticed, he’d been loving me quietly. How much patience had that man needed to keep it to himself all this time?
“Let me see,” Daniel said gently.
I handed him the journal with shaking hands. He read the entries about the letters.
“I knew he loved you,” Daniel said quietly. “I’ve known for years. But I didn’t know about the letters. I didn’t know it had been that long.”
“Seventeen years,” I whispered. “He’s loved me for seventeen years, and I pushed him away. I blamed him. I made him leave.”
“You were grieving.”
“I was cruel. I was a coward.” I wiped my face roughly. “And Mom was trying to tell me. All that confusion at dinner about Jake and letters. She meant Axel. She was trying to give me her blessing and I thought she was just confused.”
Daniel pulled me against him. I cried into his shirt. He held me while I fell apart for the second time in three weeks.
When the sobs finally slowed, I pulled back. Then I picked up my phone with hands that still wouldn’t stop shaking.
I opened the thread of Axel’s unanswered messages. Days of “thinking of you” and “I’m here” and “please let me know you’re okay.”
He’d refused to leave even when I’d told him to.
His love stayed even when I pushed it away. I texted him.
Delia
I found the journal. Can we talk?
Axel
I’ll be there in twenty minutes.