Carefully. Like they might bite if I move too fast.
“I’ve been getting messages,” I say. “Letters. From someone who says they knew Mom. And Grandma.”
Mara’s hand pauses mid-stir.
“Letters?” she echoes lightly.
“They’re not… casual,” I continue, choosing each word with care. “They talk about the fire. About things that were kept afterward. About people who lied. People who ran. About parts of my family’s story that don’t line up with what I was told.”
I don’t mention the way the words crawled under my skin the first time I read them. Or how the handwriting felt intentional.
Her expression doesn’t harden, but it does smooth over.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she says gently. “That old mess.”
Mess.
The word lands wrong.
“They said there are things my father never knew,” I say quietly. “Or pretended not to know. That there are pieces missing. That my grandmother kept things after the fire.”
Mara reaches across the table before I finish, squeezing my hand with practiced warmth. “People were scared back then. Everyone was. Fires have a way of scrambling the truth.”
“It didn’t feel small,” I say. “It still doesn’t.”
Her thumb rubs slow, soothing circles against my knuckles. “It wasn’t small at the time,” she agrees. “But it doesn’t need to stay big now.”
I search her face. “You’re not worried?”
“No,” she says easily. Too easily. “I’m really not. Families were complicated then. Secrets, misunderstandings, people trying to protect each other in all the wrong ways.”
That doesn’t sit right.
The letters didn’t sound like misunderstandings. They sounded like intent.
“There’s nothing you need to fix,” she adds quickly, as if she can feel my thoughts sharpening. “Nothing you need to solve. Digging up old wounds doesn’t heal them, Abilene.”
She smiles, warm and convincing. “What matters is that we’re here now. Together.”
Together.
I nod, because I don’t yet know how to push back without breaking everything fragile between us.
My insides stay unsettled anyway.
Mara must sense it, because her smile shifts. Brightening, turning mischievous, flipping a switch. “Alright. Enough heavy stuff.”
“I—”
“You look like you need a distraction,” she says, already standing. “And you cannot reconnect with your mysterious aunt andnotgo out for a drink.”
I blink. “I don’t really?—”
“Too late,” she says cheerfully, grabbing her jacket. “We’re going out.”
And just like that, the questions are tucked away again. Unsolved, unacknowledged, still humming under my skin.
Waiting.
