I slow to a jog, then stop completely when I see the name on the screen.
Mia
Congratulations on the engagement! I know you're probably crazy busy, but I just wanted to give you a heads up that Lydia convinced me to have a baby shower in a couple of weeks. It's at the lake house. Please come. It wouldn't be the same without you x
I haven't been back to the lake house since Jake died. Since saying goodbye to Nate in my childhood bedroom in a way that felt unfinished and wrong and permanent all at once.
I haven't let myself imagine returning because imagining it means facing everything I left behind.
Including him.
And even if I wanted to go—even if I told myself it was just for Mia and Ollie and my soon-to-be niece or nephew—I would run into Nate.
Eden is too small to avoid ghosts. Especially the ones who are still breathing. Geography is cruel like that.
And what would I say?
Nothingcomes to mind. Literally nothing that wouldn't either sound desperately pathetic or aggressively defensive, and I've already hit my quota for both this year.
I have nothing left to say to him. Especially after our brief interaction at Mia and Ollie's wedding five years ago, which was essentially a three-minute exercise in how many ways two people can hurt each other while standing at a bar holding champagne.
Turns out: several.
And I can't imagine he does either, not after the silence. Months turned into years with no word, no explanation, just fragments passed on through other people. Ollie mentioning he was out of rehab. My mom quietly reassuring me that he was alive and doing well for himself.
That was it.
Silence is its own kind of answer and sometimes, it's the cruelest one.
I stare at my phone for another moment before the screen dims. I don't reply.
My legs are shaking slightly. Whether from the run or the thought of Eden, I can't tell.
I start running again. Faster now, like I can outrun the thought of him.
But I’m having no luck outrunning anything that has to do with that place. My mind shifts, as it always does when I think of the life I left behind in Eden.
My brother is going to be a dad.
The thought still feels surreal. Ollie, who stepped into adulthood without hesitation when ours fell apart. Who learned how to cook and budget and hold things together when Dad died and I was still learning how to exist in a world without him. Who made pancakes every Sunday morning even when he was juggling school and a social life, just because it was something Dad used to do. Who sat with me through panic attacks at three in the morning and never once made me feel like a burden.
He's going to be a good dad, the best even. I know that with a certainty that hurts.
Mia is lucky. Their baby is lucky.
Their wedding was small. Intimate. Perfectly them. A late afternoon ceremony under string lights at Eden's country club, Mia in a simple dress that made her look like something out of a dream, Ollie crying before she even made it down the aisle.
I stood beside them and felt the weight of all the things we'd survived together—Dad's death, Jake's death, the way our family had to learn how to be whole again when pieces of us were missing.
Nate was Ollie's best man.
We acted like nothing had ever happened between us. Polite. Distant. Careful not to stand too close or let our eyes meet for longer than necessary.
By then, the silence between us had stretched so long that pretending felt easier than acknowledging what we'd lost. Like grief we'd already done the work of mourning.
Things were going smoothly until I had too much to drink and remembered I was there with Liam. My then-boyfriend. The one I'd brought to family dinners a handful of times, the one who smiled in all the right places but never quite fit.
Nate's jaw tightened when Liam walked in. That, I remember clear as day. The air shifted and something that had been carefully contained suddenly wasn't.
