Page 66 of Letting Go

That wrecks me.

“I know,” I whisper. “I know you didn’t.”

She nods, slow and silent, like she’s trying not to dissolve. Like she’s waited years for someone to say exactly that.

I inhale. It feels like glass. “I wasn’t ignoring your voicemails, Keira. I just… I couldn’t handle them. I told myself I’d listen later. That later never came.” I run a hand through my hair. “Until last night.”

Something in her face breaks open. A crumpled kind of hope.

“I was drowning,” she says. “I was screaming into a bottle and sending it to you every week. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“I know,” I say. “And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I left you in that storm alone.”

She blinks fast. I think it’s the only thing keeping her tears at bay.

“I finally get it,” I add. “Why you… why it happened with Mike. I wanted to hate you. I did hate you. But he knew what he was doing. You were vulnerable and isolated and desperate to be seen. He used that. And I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner.”

She exhales, shaky. “I’m sorry, too. I didn’t want to hurt you. I just- he said you were leaving him. That he didn’t have anything left. I thought maybe if I gave him something, he’d…” Her voice cracks.

“It’s not your fault,” I say gently.

Silence, for a moment. Then she says it, the one thing I didn’t know I needed to hear. “Can we start over?”

I nod, heart pounding. “Clean slate.”

The way she says “yes”, like I just threw her a life vest and she wasn’t sure she deserved to be saved, nearly undoes me.

“Okay,” I say, rallying. “First thing: we’re getting you out of here.”

Her eyebrows lift. “Now?”

“Yes. Like, five minutes ago. Pack whatever you need. Everything else we’ll come back for.”

She hesitates. “And the second thing?”

“You agree to see a therapist.”

She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t roll her eyes. Doesn’t even sigh like a teenager being dragged into a PSA. Instead, she straightens up.

“Okay,” she says. Clear. Steady. Brave.

That’s the moment I know she’s going to be okay.

She grabs a bag and starts tossing things in, T-shirts, her laptop, a hoodie I think might be mine from years ago. She moves fast, like she’s afraid the door might lock again if she takes too long.

When she zips the bag shut and slings it over her shoulder, I catch a glimpse of her, not as the sister who broke my heart, but the girl who never stopped trying to find her way home.

And I’m here. I’m finally here.

“You ready?” I ask.

She nods.

We walk out of that house without looking back.

Chapter 24

Coming back to the house, the scene of the crime, metaphorical and otherwise, is… weird. Awkward. Tense. Kind of like being in a haunted mansion, except instead of ghosts it’s bad memories and the faint scent of Mike’s stupid cologne that I still can’t get rid of.

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