Alone.
Chapter Seventeen: Nora
“What’s your favourite flower?”
I turn my head toward him. Sunlight rests warm on my cheek, the café’s side door propped open beside us.
It’s been months since the divorce.
Months since I stopped being someone’s wife.
Five years of that. Before it, a daughter—a girl learning to be small. I have worn names that were not mine, answered to titles given to me by people who never once asked what I wanted to be called.
Now I’m just… Nora.
That is my title.
I wake up some mornings and whisper my name to myself.Nora. Just to make sure I haven’t disappeared again. To feel the sound of it in my mouth. To remind myself that I exist outside of who I used to be.
I never learned to be just myself. For years I belonged to someone else. A person who existed because someone else needed her. Now when I introduce myself to the other students in my night classes, I give only my first name. No one asks for more.
The community college building is plain. Beige walls. Scuffed floors. Desks too small for a notebook and a textbook at the same time. Chairs that creak when you shift your weight.
I was homeschooled. My mother taught me everything she knew, but it wasn’t much.
She taught me to read. She taught me to add and subtract. She taught me to keep a house clean, to have dinner ready, to never raise my voice.
She never taught me how to be in a classroom.
I sit among people who already understand the rules. They take notes without thinking. They write fast. They raise their hands without hesitation. They ask questions and do not apologize for needing answers.
I don’t know how to write for hours. My hand cramps. My fingers ache by the end of each lecture. I stop and shake them out, flex them open and closed, press them flat against the desk. The cool surface helps. Sometimes I lose the thread of a lecture. Words drift past me before I can catch them. I re-read the same paragraph three or four times before it sticks.
I sit in the back of the room, near the exit. I need to see everyone who comes in and goes out. Old habits.
But this is still good.
Hard. Slow. Embarrassing sometimes. Still good.
Because every day, I choose to return.
I am studying social work. One day, I want to help women who grew up the way I did. Women whose stories sound like my mother’s story.
I will not rescue anyone. I will not change anyone. But I will stand beside them while they find their own way forward.
Maeve stood beside me until I found mine.
I have another title now, too.
Friend.
Maeve insisted on that one.
Every weekend, we fill the hours together. Sometimes it’s board games sprawled across the living room floor, pieces scattered and rules argued over. Sometimes it’s groceryshopping that turns into laughter in the frozen aisle when Maeve pretends to sword-fight with a baguette.
She made me watch Barbie movies. All of them. In order. She said it was cultural education. She cried during the one about the island. I pretended not to notice.
I didn’t know friendship could be this full of sound. I didn’t know it could wrap around you with warmth and leave no fear behind. I didn’t know it could be this simple.
