“I’ve been trying to make sense of it,” I say, voice rough from disuse.

Tinā pauses mid-wipe, her hand resting on the countertop. “Make sense of what?”

“There’s something I want you to read.”

It’s right where I left it—a small, leather-bound journal with soft, worn edges and Magnolia’s handwriting etched on the inside cover. My chest tightens the moment I touch it. I carry it back into the kitchen like it might shatter if I hold it too tight.

I place the journal in her hands, swallowing hard. “Magnolia gave it to me the morning she left Sydney. She said her heart was in it, the parts she couldn’t speak out loud.”

Tinā takes it, reverent in the way only mothers can be when handling someone’s pain.

“She wrote about falling in love with me. About how much I meant to her.”

Tinā opens the journal, flipping through the first few pages in silence. She pauses on a page, her eyes scanning a passage. Then she clears her throat and reads aloud.

“Sometimes I look at him and forget how to breathe. I didn’t expect this. I didn’t want to fall for anyone. But he makes me feel seen. And safe. And wanted. It’s startling how fast I’ve become his.”

She pauses again, glancing up at me, but I can’t meet her eyes.

Her voice softens as she reads the next line.

“He doesn’t even realize how much he’s healing me just by letting me in. I don’t know how to explain it—but when he looks at me, I feel like maybe I’m not so broken after all.”

“I don’t get it. How do you go from that to deleting someone from your life like they were nothing?”

Tinā closes the journal, resting her hand on top of it. “You don’t write words like those unless you mean them. And people don’t lie in ink, Aleki. Her affections for you were real.”

“But if it was real––” I stop, tired of asking the same question over and over.

“How do I still love her this much after everything?”

She looks at me like she’s seeing right through to the boy I used to be. Then she reaches across the table, her hand covering mine.

“Because when you love someone the way you loved her, it doesn’t vanish. Not just because they’re gone. That kind of love doesn’t disappear, Aleki. It stays. And it changes you.”

Her words gut me. But somehow, they also hold me together.

“You need fresh air. Not this grief-soaked Sydney silence you’ve been sitting in. You need grounding and family and to breathe where the world isn’t so heavy.”

I glance up, already knowing where this is going.