He hesitates.Then he looks at me—really looks—eyes darker than the misty evening behind him.
“You’re a lot like her, you know?”He says quietly.“Pretty similar.”
My breath catches.“What does that mean?”
“Curious,” he murmurs.“When she wanted to know about my life with the band, she’d share something first.It was her way of opening the door.”
I swallow.“Something private?”
He nods.“At my age, she assumed I should be married.Or twice divorced.”A humorless huff leaves him.“She wanted to know who broke my heart.So she told me the love of her life died before her seventeenth birthday.”
The words hit me like a slow bruise blooming from the inside.
My mouth trembles.
My eyes burn all over again.
I press my fingers to my lips, as if touching my own skin might keep everything inside from spilling out all at once.
“She was achild,” I whisper.“A child who had to bury her future.”
My voice wobbles.The tears come harder, falling in a way that tells the truth before I can.
Alec shifts—not toward me, exactly, but close enough for me to sense him at my side.His hand twitches once, a quick, involuntary movement, like instinct overruled by restraint.
I stare down at the letter again, my fingers trembling around its softened edges.
“Lina carried this alone,” I say, the realization scraping its way through me.“All these years ...she never had another version of him.No new memories.No chapters.Just this boy she loved and couldn’t keep.”
My throat closes.
A breath escapes—thin, uneven, and impossible to swallow back down.
“I don’t think I can keep reading these letters,” I confess.
Alec’s hand finds mine.
The touch is light—barely there—but something inside me eases.My lungs find a slower rhythm, like his skin against mine reminds them how to function.It makes no sense.And yet it’s real.
“People think teenagers don’t feel things deeply,” I say, tears sliding fast now.“They’re wrong.God, they’re so wrong.”
He nods once—quiet, certain.“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”My voice breaks apart on the question.“Why didn’t she tell anyone?”
“That’s what the letters are for,” he says in a low voice.Then, carefully—almost like he’s checking for permission—he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.“She probably couldn’t carry the loss of him and everything she dreamed about.Can you imagine wanting a little boy with red hair and then ending up with a niece who looked just like the life she lost?”
I blink, startled.
That possibility had never crossed my mind.
“You think ...when I grew older, she decided it was better to keep some distance?”My voice thins.“I was ...”
“You were what?”he asks gently.
“Sick.”I swallow.“My parents divorced two years before.Mom didn’t have insurance, and I was in and out of hospitals.”
His expression shifts.
