The Pact
208 Words
Marisol didn’t leave the room for a long time. She sat with the notebooks spread around her like a circle of witnesses. The eucalyptus scent from the desk drifted through the air, grounding her, reminding her of her mother’s hands — warm, steady, ink‑stained.
She closed her eyes.
She remembered being seven, sitting on her mother’s lap while she wrote. Her mother whispering stories in her ear. Her mother saying, “Las historias nos eligen, mi amor. We don’t choose them.”
She remembered her mother’s funeral. The way people whispered. The way they avoided looking at Marisol. The way her father refused to talk about what happened.
She remembered the shadow at the window.
She opened her eyes.
She wasn’t safe.
But she wasn’t helpless.
She gathered the notebooks and placed them back into the wooden box. She tucked the cipher wheel into her pocket. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
Then she whispered into the stillness:
“I’ll finish what you started.”
The room seemed to exhale — a soft shift in the air, like approval.
She stood, legs shaky but determined.
This was her mother’s legacy.
Her mother’s burden.
Her mother’s unfinished work.
And now it was hers.
- Writer
