Moving means shaking the dust off our secrets, but she points to the house on the corner and says, “It’s a fresh start,” and then, when she sees the look I’m giving her, “He’s never going to properly forget until we leave this place.”

She means Logan, but I don’t think moving is the solution.

“This place has some happy memories, but…” Mum stops and there’s a tear in the corner of her eye. She blinks it away, but not before I see what she used to look like.

I loved her so much. I loved all of them. But that version of my mother is like watching an actress play a character you haven’t seen in years.

The “but” she can’t speak is Will. It’s the garden she never goes into and the fence painted a different shade of brown where the hole used to be. It’s the flickers of memories we all get at certain moments of every day…of Will bounding up the stairs or lying upside down on the sofa or laughing that beautiful, contagious, everywhere laugh.

That’s why Mum wants to move, and I get it. She wants a fresh start where all her memories will be of Logan: the boy who could never live up to my brother.

That’s how Dad finds the notes. He’s off work, sorting through my room while I’m at school, and, when I come home, he sits on my bed, pulls them out, and says, “You shouldn’t have done this, Amy.”

“I’m sorry.”

“If she finds out…”

Dad can’t finish the sentence because he isn’t sure what she’d do. Would she take it out on me or on him? Would she read the notes and remember, or would she burn them unopened? Mum is a mystery I wish I didn’t have to solve every single day.

“What are you going to do with them?” I ask, and Dad sighs.

“I’ll keep them safe.”

“Please don’t throw them away.”

It’s Dad’s turn to cry, now, and he doesn’t stop like Mum did. He lets the tears fall on my duvet and then takes two deep breaths. “I would never do that.”

He opens one and we read it together, then another, and we forget that, at any moment, Mum could come home. We don’t care because we’re with Will.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ll never not be sorry.”

Dad squeezes my hand. “It wasn’t your fault, Amy.”

All the words fall out of my world, leaving me to stare at him until he says, “None of this…Will…Logan…is because of you. Don’t ever forget that.”