Nathan
Weeks passed after my mother’s funeral. The pain didn’t lessen, but I figured out how to navigate life with that ache in my chest.
The last time I saw my mother—really saw her, not just in passing at some event or another—I had kicked her out. Sure, she was being cruel to Olivia… But she wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. She never did try to hurt anyone. She could be tough and rigid, but she usually meant well.
I didn’t understand why she went to Edward’s Gulch on her own. It made no sense. She was profoundly against the notion of anyone going to that place, and I got my backside tanned on multiple occasions when I snuck there as a kid.
Why, then, was she going there, on her own, in the middle of the rainy spring season? It was so unlike her.
Her empty space at my d
