Ch. 67 - A PAST THAT'D KILL YOU

LINDEN (Twenty three years old)

I was dreaming.

Not about my mother humming a funeral song in the bathroom, not about the times she would snap and destroy cups and plates and upturn chairs. I was dreaming about something else and I doubt it's because the night was cold enough to make me sink into bed harder than I would have, or because the silence in the room felt like a suffocating fog, but because the ache in my chest had come back with too much uncertainty that I questioned what happened in the past.

I stood in that living room again. The small house I lived in all my life in college.

The same small house I shared with Lev. The one with cream-coloured walls, comfortable sofas and the kitchen that was cleaned to perfection because Lev took care of it every day.

I was soaked with sweat, confusion coursed through me. My phone was clutched in my hand, the last words I heard still echoed through my ears.

"She has given birth."

I couldn't sit since I heard the news. My legs and body wou