When I hit send, my hands shook, but my breathing felt deeper. Like I’d cut the last string tying me to a weight I’d carried for years.
Two days later, Julian and I got the call: our offer was accepted.
We hugged in the kitchen, laughing, and for a moment I forgot entirely about my parents, my sister, the debt, the bats, the broken windows.
I remembered what it felt like to build something with someone who wasn’t trying to take from me.
Part 7
Moving into our new house felt different than moving into my craftsman had. That first house had been my victory over scarcity, my proof that I could escape. This house was something softer: a beginning, not a defiant ending.
We painted the spare room into a shared office space. We argued over where to put the couch. We bought a ridiculous amount of plants because Julian believed we could “redeem your herb record,” and I told him that was optimistic bordering on delusional, which made him laugh.
And slowly, without me noticing exactly when, my nervous system unclenched.
I stopped flinching at unknown numbers. I stopped scanning every room for emotional landmines. I stopped expecting love to come with an invoice.
One afternoon, while unpacking the last box of kitchen stuff, I found something that made me sit down on the floor.
A photo album.
It was one I’d thrown in a box years ago and forgotten about. I flipped it open and saw old snapshots: me and Clara in Halloween costumes, Clara with her arm around my shoulders, both of us grinning. My dad holding me on his shoulders at a fair. My mom smiling behind a birthday cake.
For a moment, grief hit me so hard it stole my breath.
Julian found me sitting there and lowered himself beside me without a word.
“They look happy,” he said quietly, looking at the pictures.
“They were,” I whispered. “Sometimes.”
He didn’t correct me. He didn’t say, But they still loved you. He just let the sadness exist without trying to talk me out of it.
That night, I dreamed about my childhood home. In the dream, the front door was wide open, and the house was full of strangers walking in and out like it was a public building. I tried to close the door, but it wouldn’t move. Every time I pushed, more people appeared.
When I woke up, my heart was racing.
Julian rolled toward me, half asleep. “Bad dream?” he murmured.
“Yeah,” I said, staring at the ceiling. “Same one, different faces.”