Almost Strangers

Fifteen Years of Silence Vera’s POV The night they came for my mother, I was at the dining table, stuck on the same mathematics question for what felt like an hour, tapping my pencil against the page while she moved around the kitchen behind me. She had been unusually quiet all evening, and even at eleven years old, I could tell something was wrong. Every few minutes she stopped what she was doing and glanced toward the window, as though she were expecting someone she didn't want to see. "Mom, are you okay?" I finally asked, turning around in my chair. She looked at me and forced a smile. "I'm fine, sweetheart. Just finish your homework before it gets too late." I wanted to believe her, so I turned back to my book. Before I could solve the next question, three hard knocks landed against the front door and my mother went completely still not the stillness of someone pausing, but the stillness of someone bracing. She dried her hands slowly on the kitchen towel and stared at the door while I watched her from my seat, trying to understand why she suddenly looked afraid. A second knock followed, louder. "Mom?" I whispered. She didn't answer. She crossed to the door with slow, uncertain steps, and her hand stayed on the knob for several seconds before she finally opened it to two police officers. All the color left her face. "Lillian Collins?" one of them asked. She swallowed hard. "Yes." "I'm afraid you need to come with us." I shoved my chair back so hard it screeched against the floor. "Why are you taking my mom?" She turned to me, and whatever was in her eyes frightened me more than the officers did. She crossed the room and knelt beside my chair, taking both my hands in hers. "Vera, listen to me carefully," she said, her voice shaking despite how hard she was fighting to hold it steady. "Whatever happens tonight, you have to remember that I love you." "What happened?" I asked, confused. Her eyes filled, and she blinked the tears back before they could fall. "There was an accident," she whispered. "Someone died, and they think it was me." My heart was pounding now. "But you didn't do anything." "I know what I did and what I didn't do." She squeezed my hands, then glanced nervously at the officers waiting by the door. "One day you might understand all of it. Until then, don't let anyone convince you that you're guilty because of me." I didn't understand what she meant .I was too young to know how one terrible night could follow a person for years, or how easily a lie becomes the truth once enough people decide to believe it. "Mom, don't go," I begged, tears sliding down my face. "Please." She pulled me into her arms and held on tight."I'm sorry, Vera," she whispered into my hair. "I'm so sorry." The officers separated us, and I stood frozen in the middle of our small living room as she walked toward the door. She looked back once, and for that last second I saw my mother again instead of the frightened woman standing in front of the police. Then the door closed behind her, and my childhood stopped feeling normal from that night on. For weeks I kept waiting for someone to tell me it had all been a mistake, that she'd be coming home. Instead the whispers started about the accident, about the Morgan family, about the woman who had died and the family that had supposedly caused it. I didn't understand why people had started looking at me differently, as if I'd done something too. Before that night, the Collins and the Morgan families had been close, and their son had been my best friend. Aries was two years older than me, but I never thought of him as anything other than the person I trusted most in the world. He was the one who waited for me after school when I was slow packing my bag, the one who taught me to ride a bicycle and laughed every time I landed in the grass, the one who told me nothing would ever happen to me because he'd be there. The last thing he ever gave me was a small silver bracelet. I still remember the afternoon he clasped it around my wrist. "So you won't forget me," he said, grinning. I laughed, because the idea seemed ridiculous. "Why would I forget you?" "Because one day I'm going to be famous, and you'll be too important to remember me." "I won't." "You will," he said, smiling like he already knew I was lying. Neither of us knew that we'd be torn apart before we ever got the chance to say goodbye. After my mother was sent away, Aries vanished from my life without explanation, my father grew distant and unreliable, and I learned early how to manage things on my own. I grew up carrying questions I was never allowed to ask, and memories I could never quite put down. Fifteen years passed. By the time I graduated from university, I had convinced myself that the boy with the crooked smile and the silver bracelet belonged to a life I'd long since outgrown. At least, that's what I told myself. On my first morning at Morgan Technologies, I stood outside the enormous glass building with my résumé folder pressed to my chest, trying to convince myself I belonged there. I had worked too hard for this job months of searching, interviews, and rejections to let nerves get in the way now. I finally had a position as a secretary at one of the most powerful companies in Los Angeles, and I intended to keep it. I took a breath and walked through the revolving doors into a lobby that looked like money: marble floors reflecting the overhead lights, employees moving briskly in every direction, nothing like the modest offices I'd worked in through university. I gave the receptionist my name. "Vera Collins." She checked her screen, then smiled. "You're expected on the executive floor." "Thank you." I stepped into the elevator and watched the numbers climb, with no idea that the doors would open on the one person I'd spent fifteen years trying not to remember. I followed the receptionist down the hall to the CEO's office. She knocked once before opening the door. "Mr. Aries, your new secretary is here." I stepped inside. The man by the windows turned around, and for a moment I forgot how to breathe. He was taller than I remembered, broader through the shoulders, nothing like the boy who still lived somewhere in the back of my memory. His hair was cut sharp, his features had settled into something harder, and the suit he wore fit him the way power usually does. But his eyes hadn't changed at all, and I knew them instantly. Aries. My best friend. The boy who once promised I'd never forget him. He looked at me, and for half a second something shifted behind his expression there and gone before I could be sure I hadn't imagined it. He knew me,I was certain of it. I waited for him to say my name. Instead, his face closed over, smooth and unreadable. "Your name?" he asked, his voice even. Something in my chest dropped. "Vera Collins." His eyes stayed on mine, giving nothing away. "Alright, Ms. Collins. You can leave your résumé with my assistant." I didn't move. He was actually going to do this after everything we'd once meant to each other, he was going to stand there and pretend I was a stranger. I made myself speak past the tightness in my throat. "Have we met before?" For one instant, something in his eyes cracked open. Then it sealed shut again. "I don't believe so," he said. And just like that, the boy I had spent fifteen years trying to forget became a stranger all over again this time, by his own choice.