MACKENZIE
It felt like time had frozen.
Aunt Susan stood there, trembling, her eyes wide with disbelief and glassy with tears. The years had softened her—faint lines around her mouth, silver streaks threading through her once-dark hair—but none of it dulled the familiarity. She was still her. The woman who'd once been my whole world.
I hadn't seen her since I was seventeen.
Now, I was twenty-eight.
Eleven years.
Eleven years of aching silence. Of birthdays passed without calls. Of grief tucked into the quiet spaces of my life. I had carried her absence like a hidden scar—one no one else could see, but I always felt. Every time I succeeded, I wished she were there. Every time I cried, I wished she could hold me.
And now—out of nowhere—she was standing right in front of me.
How coul
