But my muscles locked. I heard my father’s snarl in my skull, so loud it drowned everything else:Don’t be weak, Caiden. Weakness is a disease.
I glanced at Amelia. “You okay?”
She laughed, brittle and hollow. “Does anyone ever come back here and feel okay?” Her hands were shaking too.
I shrugged, watching a car crawl by, its muffler farting gray smoke. “Guess not. Guess that’s why they all leave if they can.”
She turned to face me then. For a second, our eyes met. Hers dark and wet, mine…I didn’t want to know. She could probably read everything in that gaze anyway.
The wanting. The sick longing to make it right, knowing I never could.
“I thought it’d be different,” she said quietly. “Coming back. I thought maybe it wouldn’t hurt as much. But it does.” She fixed her stare on the chipped curb, like she could will herself somewhere else.
I nodded. “Yeah. It kills you slow.”
Neither of us spoke for a while after that.
We kept walking. The street narrowed, the buildings crowding in.
Up ahead, the diner sign flickered, stuttering between OPEN and darkness.
The sky had started to darken, sinking into a bruised dusk. Streetlights spat weak halos on the sidewalk, not even bothering to chase away the dark.
We slid into a booth by the window. Amelia sat rigid, knuckles pale against the mug she wrapped both hands around the second it landed.
I took my seat across from her. I tried not to notice how her shoulders trembled, or the way her lower lip kept catching between her teeth. I tried not to tremble, myself.
The waitress showed up. I ordered a burger. Amelia mumbled something. Neither of us had eaten since yesterday, but the plates would go mostly untouched. I already knew.
After she left, it was quiet. Just the scrape of ceramic, the hum of lights, the faint sound of an argument from the kitchen.
I wanted to say:I’m sorry.I wanted to say: You can break down, right here, and I’ll hold you together.I wanted to say:Forget everything except this. The way I see you, the way you are now, so fucking strong even when you’re falling apart.
Instead, I just rolled my empty cup between my palms, flexed my fingers until the bones ached.
She spoke first. “The last time I was in here was after Lillian died.” Her voice was flat, almost monotone, drained of everything except memory. “Lauren tried to make me eat pie. I couldn’t even taste it. I just sat here and thought about how nothing would ever taste normal again.”
I swallowed hard. “I know what you mean.” I stared out the window, even though the only thing to see was my own twisted reflection. “After my dad died, I spent nights in here. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t think. Just came in and ordered coffee until my hands shook.”
A sliver of sympathy moved through her gaze. “Did it help?”
“No. Nothing helps.”
The silence came back. We were both waiting to see which one of us would break first.
The food arrived.
I shoveled bites down, not tasting them, just filling space.
Finally, I said, “You don’t have to go. The funeral. If you don’t want to.”
She set her fork down slowly. “I can’t not go. She was still my mother.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak for a second.
I didn’t tell her I remembered every rumor about her mom, about how she’d leave Amelia and Lillian home alone, high for days, sometimes screaming so loud the neighbors called the cops just to get a little silence.
She stared at her hands. “I thought after seven years I could do this. That maybe I’d…I don’t know. That it’d be over.”
