Chapter 9
1563 Words
I woke with purpose for the first time since Bella died.
It surprised me more than anything else that morning, that quiet shift from despair to something almost resembling direction.
I still had the brass key.
I still had no idea what it opened. But for the first time in weeks, I couldn't sit still, couldn't let another day slip past me while I waited for grief to loosen its grip on its own.
Before I started looking for answers, though, I decided to visit my parents.
Not because I expected answers from them. I simply missed my family, missed the version of us that had existed before everything fell apart.
On the way, I stopped at the bakery near their house and bought a box of my mother's favorite pastries, the almond ones she always pretended not to love too much.
On impulse, I also picked up eggs and fresh bread, telling myself that if I could cook breakfast the way I used to on Sunday mornings, maybe something in that house would feel less broken.
When I arrived, the house felt unfamiliar in a way I hadn't expected.
Quiet. Cold. As if Bella's absence had taken every bit of warmth with it when she left.
I let myself in and started cooking before anyone woke, moving through the kitchen on instinct, cracking eggs and toasting bread the way I had a hundred times before.
For a few minutes, standing there in the early light, it almost felt normal again.
Then my mother walked in.
She froze the moment she saw me standing at the stove.
For a second neither of us said anything. Then she crossed the kitchen without a word and poured herself a cup of coffee, ignoring the plate I'd already set out for her.
"I remembered how you like your eggs," I said quietly.
She didn't answer.
She turned and walked out of the kitchen with nothing but her coffee in hand, leaving the breakfast untouched behind her.
I reached toward her instinctively as she passed, not even for a hug, just to touch her arm, just to feel some small proof that she was still there.
She stepped away before my hand could reach her.
There was no anger in it. Just distance, deliberate and absolute.
That hurt more than shouting ever could have.
My father came downstairs a few minutes later. He noticed the untouched plate at the table. He noticed the way I was standing there, trying very hard to look like I was fine.
He didn't make a scene about any of it. He simply sat down at the table and ate, not because he was hungry, I realized, but because he understood I had tried, and he wasn't going to let that effort go unacknowledged.
"Thank you," he said quietly, once he'd finished.
It was the first kindness anyone in my family had shown me in days, and I had to look down at my hands to keep myself from crying right there in the kitchen.
"Lena," he said.
I looked up.
He stopped himself.
His eyes flicked toward the hallway, toward the direction my mother had disappeared in, and something in his expression shifted, heavy and unreadable.
"Not today," he said quietly.
I could feel that he was carrying something, something he wanted to say and couldn't yet bring himself to. I didn't push.
I simply nodded and let the moment pass between us.
The rest of the visit unraveled the way I'd feared it might.
My mother barely looked at me again before I left. My father walked me to the door, and I could see him hesitating there, some part of him wanting to stop me, wanting to say more than he had.
He didn't.
"Take care of yourself," he said instead.
I smiled at him, the kind of smile that costs more than it should, and my father watched as I climbed into the waiting cab.
Inside, though, something heartbreaking settled over me.
I was no longer entirely welcome in the only home I'd ever known, not the way I used to be.
Grief had rearranged the walls of that house, and I wasn't sure I had a room in it anymore.
I forced myself into work the next morning, the first time I'd set foot in the publishing house since Bella's funeral.
Part of me wanted to turn around before I even reached the building. I knew hiding in my apartment wouldn't stop the whispers, though, and life had clearly kept moving for everyone else even while mine remained frozen in place.
The moment I stepped through the doors, I understood exactly how much had changed.
Conversations quieted as I walked past.
Coworkers who used to wave from across the room now lowered their voices and found something urgent to attend to on their desks.
In the break room, someone fumbled for the remote and switched off the television just as footage from Bella's funeral flickered briefly across the screen.
No one looked at me directly.
No one openly accused me of anything. No one defended me either.
The silence surrounding me felt worse than either would have.
I buried myself in the manuscripts on my desk, trying to lose myself in sentences that weren't mine, trying to ignore the eyes I could feel following me across the office throughout the day.
But every page I edited reminded me of the same cruel truth I couldn't escape.
Stories always had endings, carefully constructed, satisfying in their resolution.
Real life didn't work that way. Real life just kept going, unresolved, whether you were ready or not.
The elevator ride down felt longer than it should have. I stood alone in the corner, watching the floor numbers light up one after another while the silence pressed against my ears.
By the time the doors opened into the lobby, I had almost convinced myself the day was over.
It wasn't.
As I stepped outside, a photographer across the street lifted his camera the moment he spotted me.
The flash went off before I even realized who he was.
I froze.
Another flash followed.
Then another.
Someone called my name, but I couldn't tell whether it was a reporter or simply someone who recognized my face from the news.
My pulse lurched.
I lowered my head and hurried toward the sidewalk, pretending I couldn't hear the questions chasing after me.
"Miss Hart... Do you have any comment on the investigation?"
"Did your sister leave a note?"
"Have the police questioned you again?"
I kept walking.
A taxi pulled over before I even raised my hand.
I climbed into the back seat and quietly gave the driver my address.
He glanced at me through the rearview mirror, his expression shifting with faint recognition, but to my relief, he asked no questions.
As the city drifted past the window, I watched strangers laugh outside cafés and couples argue over nothing important.
Life carried on around me as though the world hadn't stopped the day Bella died.
Mine had.
I rested my forehead against the cool glass and closed my eyes for a moment.
Somewhere beneath the noise, beneath the grief and suspicion and endless headlines, Bella had been trying to tell me something before she died.
I could feel that certainty settling deeper inside me with every passing day.
I found myself cataloguing everything I'd lost in the span of a few short weeks. Bella. My mother's easy affection.
My family's trust, which had once felt unshakable and now felt like something I'd have to earn back one difficult day at a time.
Even ordinary things, the ride home, a quiet evening alone, felt impossible to manage anymore.
I touched the brass key in my pocket at a red light, the metal cool against my fingertips. It was the only thing in my life right now that felt certain, the only fixed point I had.
"Tomorrow," I said quietly to myself, "I'm finding out what you were trying to tell me."
I wasn't waiting for someone else to save me from this anymore. I was choosing to save myself.
By the time I reached my apartment, I was emotionally spent in a way that went beyond exhaustion. I dropped my keys onto the counter and leaned back against the door, letting it hold me up for a moment while I closed my eyes.
Then my phone vibrated in my pocket.
I pulled it out and saw a message from my father.
"Can you come home tomorrow? There's something your mother and I need to tell you about Bella."
I stared at the screen, my heartbeat picking up speed with every second I read and reread those words.
Whatever he hadn't been able to say that morning, whatever had stopped him in the kitchen with that heavy, unreadable look on his face, he was finally ready to say it.
My fingers moved before I could second-guess myself.
I'll be there.
I set the phone down on the counter and looked at my keyring, where the small brass key hung beside my apartment key, catching the last bit of evening light through the window.
I slipped it between my fingers and closed my hand around it, feeling its weight settle into my palm one more time.
Tomorrow, I thought.
One way or another, everything begins tomorrow.
- Writer
