For weeks, we had spoken slowly. Carefully. Sometimes awkwardly. Sometimes not at all. But she had shown up. To hearings. To Julian’s checkups. To Clara’s Sunday lunches. To the quiet moments where trust was not declared, only practiced.
I held my mother’s book in my hands.
Adrian looked toward the mountain.
“This is where I proposed,” he said softly. “Not marriage. Not exactly. I asked Sofia to leave with me. To go anywhere. To begin again.”
“What did she say?” Serena asked.
Adrian’s smile was sad. “She said beginning again means nothing if you bring the same cowardice with you.”
Clara snorted. “That was Sofia.”
I opened the book to the map.
“My mother thought this place was unfinished,” I said. “Maybe she was right.”
Serena looked at me. “What do we do?”
I had wondered the same thing all night.
There were no ashes to scatter. No monument to build. No curse to break. Only a story that had been interrupted by fear, greed, and silence.
