When Eden returns home for the first time in years, grief is still the loudest voice in the room. But a visit to her mother’s grave unearths more than memories… it uncovers truths she never expected.
In the quiet between anger and understanding, Eden begins to see love in an entirely new light.
It had been two years since I left home, two years of textbooks, microwaved dinners, and the quiet ache of trying to learn how to sleep in a place where my mother’s voice couldn’t reach me.
No matter how far I got from our neighborhood, no matter how many dorm rooms I moved through or routines I adopted, my mother’s grave stayed with me.
It lived in the back of my mind like a song I couldn’t skip, always there, humming underneath everything else.
My mom, Miranda, died when I was 15.
She died of breast cancer. It happened fast, faster than any of us were prepared for.
One month my mom was painting sunflowers in the kitchen and baking orange-cardamom muffins with her hair tied back in a ribbon…
The next, she was in a hospital bed, her voice barely louder than the machines, her smile worn thin by exhaustion. She was everything to us, our centre of gravity, and when she left, the ground beneath us cracked.
Asher, my little brother, was only ten. He tried to act like it didn’t break him.
He stopped crying after the funeral and started sleeping with the hallway light on. He used to write little notes to our mother and leave them under his pillow.
It was as though grief worked like magic and she could collect his love while he slept. I would sneak in and read them sometimes, each one more hopeful than the last, and my heart would ache for the way children carry sorrow.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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