SAME BUT DIFFERENT
NORA
I arrive late.
My flight is delayed, then the drive from the airport takes longer than it should, and by the time I step out of the car the air already smells like damp earth and eucalyptus.
Eden always smells like memory.
The chapel is already full. Eden's only chapel—a small white building with wooden pews worn smooth by generations of grief and celebration, stained glass windows casting colored light across the worn floorboards.
I try to slip in quietly, keeping to the back, but the moment I step through the heavy wooden doors I know it's useless.
The hinges creak.
Heads turn.
My chest tightens. My body remembers before my brain does.
Someone is speaking. I recognize the voice instantly.
Nate.
My heart stops. My knees weaken.
He stands at the front, shoulders squared but tense, hands clasped together like he's holding himself upright through sheer will.
He's talking about Alfie—about his stubborn kindness, aboutthe way he fixed things that didn't want to be fixed, about how he showed up when it mattered, even when it was inconvenient or painful.
The words are steady, measured, but I hear the strain beneath them, the way his voice catches on certain syllables.
This isn't rehearsed. This is love trying to survive loss.
I'm trying to be invisible. Trying to slip into the back pew unnoticed. Trying to breathe through the sudden, overwhelming reality that I'm in the same room as him for the first time in years.
But when he looks up I watch it happen in slow motion.
The exact moment his eyes find mine.
The way his entire body goes rigid—not tense, but frozen, like someone hit pause on his existence.
The way his hands grip the podium so hard his knuckles go white.
The way his mouth opens slightly, the words he was speaking dying mid-sentence.
And then our eyes lock.
And the entire world splits open.
Not slowly. Not gently.
It ruptures—like a dam breaking, like glass shattering under pressure, like every carefully constructed wall I've built around the memory of him crumbling to dust in an instant.
My lungs seize. I can't breathe. Can't move. Can't do anything except stand here being completely unmade by the way he's looking at me.
Like I'm an apparition. A hallucination. Something his grief-stricken mind conjured that can't possibly be real. His face drains of color. His chest rises and falls rapidly, like he's drowning in open air.
And the look in his eyes?—
