The next morning, the journal is still sitting on my nightstand, but I can’t bring myself to touch it. It feels like it’s staring at me, daring me to open it again and face more of the truth I’m not ready to deal with.
I spend most of the morning avoiding it, helping Nanna in the kitchen and checking on Pops in the garden. But no matter how hard I try, my thoughts keep drifting back to the pages, to the words my mom wrote in her final months. It’s like a weight I can’t shake, pressing down on me, making it hard to breathe.
After lunch, I head outside to clear my head, wandering through the garden until I find Pops tinkering with one of his old tools near the shed. He looks up as I approach, his face creased with that warm smile he always has.
“Hey, hurricane,” he says, wiping the dirt f
