It was well past midnight when Julia found the first letter.
She had been avoiding it, like she had avoided so many things in the past few months. The world had felt too heavy recently. Every day blurred into the next—work, home, the occasional coffee with a friend who spoke more than she listened. It was a life lived on autopilot, a life held together with reminders and routines, like a house built on crumbling foundation stones.
But that night, when the house was finally still, when the world outside was silent but for the wind, Julia’s eyes fell on the box by the front door. It was the one her mother had left behind, full of things she never had the heart to go through: