HELENA POV
I told myself I was just going to wrap presents.
Nothing dramatic. Nothing loaded. Just paper, tape, bows. Something normal I could do with my hands while my brain tried to stop spinning itself into the ground.
That was the lie I fed myself as I slipped into Trish’s bedroom and closed the door behind me.
The house felt different with Silas in it. Fuller. Louder in some ways, quieter in others. The twins’ laughter echoed down the hallway upstairs, punctuated by Silas’s deeper voice—steady, amused, patient—as he helped them with Legos in their room. I could picture it without trying. Him sitting on the floor, long legs folded awkwardly, hands too big for plastic bricks but careful anyway. Them talking over each other, correcting him, bossing him around like he’d always been t
