Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Weight of Staying: Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 10

Laura stared at the name, heart pounding, thumb hesitating over the answer icon while possibilities ricocheted through her mind."Well. Creepy," she said, voice cracking with a nervous laugh, trying to mask the adrenaline that surged just beneath her skin.She answered, the phone cool and slick against her ear, her voice softer than she intended when she said hello."Were you hiding in my ceiling?" Laura asked, trying for levity but unable to keep the tremor entirely out of her words.There was a long pause, static humming on the line, the kind that filled up with all the things neither of them had said in years."Good afternoon to you too," he replied, his tone dry as a desert wind, but with an edge of warmth she hadn’t realized she’d been waiting for.Her father's voice came through, carrying that dry, level steadiness that had survived twenty-something years of military service and now seemed determined to outlast time itself. It was the sound of steel wrapped in flannel, familiar a

By the time Laura reached Riverdawn, the sky had already begun its slow, aching transformation. The blue above her car bled into bruised lavender and orange, the colors smudged across the windshield as if the world itself were exhaling after a long day. Everything outside her window seemed suspended in the in-between, neither full daylight nor true night.Evening settled over the town in a slow, deliberate hush, draining the blue from the distant hills until only their silhouettes remained. Amber light spilled across the glass of narrow storefronts, igniting gold in the hand-painted letters, making everything look delicate and slightly unreal—like a place caught between memory and dream.Riverdawn had the peculiar look of a place built by people who expected secrets to be impossible, where every porch faced the street, and every window watched its neighbor. There was a stubborn intimacy in the way the houses pressed close, as if the town itself insisted on togetherness.Low houses crou

He stopped, the bottle hovering midair, shoulders hunched as if expecting a blow."What?" The syllable sounded small, defensive, almost childlike—a man backed into a corner by grief."You haven't answered Dad for weeks, you look like you've been dragged behind a truck, your house smells like a distillery, and now you're pouring another drink while I'm asking you what happened." Her voice was trembling with anger and helplessness, each accusation stacking up like empty bottles on the counter.Drew stared into the glass, as if the answer to everything might be floating in the whiskey’s golden depths.For several seconds, he said nothing, the seconds stretching thin and painful, as a wire pulled too tight.Laura's an

This hollowed-out version who seemed to have spent days being slowly erased, each hour taking a little more volume, a little more color, until only the outline of him remained."Dad was worried," Laura said, her voice softer now, the words carrying a mix of accusation, care, and exhaustion. She studied Drew's posture for the smallest sign that he heard her.Drew lowered his hands to his knees, fingers flexing restlessly, his gaze finding a speck on the floor rather than her eyes."He worries," Drew muttered, the words worn thin by years of repetition, as if worry was simply a property of the Leighton family, inescapable as gravity."He called you repeatedly," Laura pressed, the syllables clipped, her patience wearing at the edges as she tried to keep the conversation fro

Not just alcohol—Laura saw it now, the brittle edge of shame, the ache of being left behind.Not just lack of sleep, either. There was an old grief there, slow-burning, compounded by loss layered over loss.He had been crying. Laura could see it in every line of his face—a vulnerability that made her want to look away, and made her refuse to do so.The realization felt too intimate, like catching a stranger’s secret in the dark, and she dropped her gaze to her own hands for safety.She looked down at her hands, studying the tiny white scar that crossed one knuckle, the memory of a broken glass two summers ago surfacing without warning.A tiny white scar crossed one knuckle, a reminder that pain could heal an