The simplicity of it broke me.
I leaned into my sister’s shoulder and cried in a way I had not allowed myself to cry in years. Not elegantly. Not quietly. The kind of crying that makes breathing uneven and leaves your face swollen. Clara held me through all of it, one hand smoothing my hair like she used to when we were girls and thunderstorms rattled the windows.
After a while, she said, “What happens now?”
I wiped my face with the sleeve of my sweater. “We find out what’s in Crown Ridge Archives.”
“And then?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer would once have terrified me. Jason had trained me to fear uncertainty because he always presented himself as the only solution.
But sitting in that imperfect apartment with my sister beside me and soup warming on the stove, I realized not knowing could also be a beginning.
