Page 4 of Never After Us
Suddenly I’m not sure I have the room—or the strength—for another change.Not again.
But the universe doesn’t ask for permission.
It just crashes your world and settles the new rules.
A soft breeze pushes through the cracked balcony door, carrying the faint scent of pastries from the bakery downstairs and the metallic clang of a passing tram.Lisbon is loud and alive and sun-washed—and somehow, I still feel like I’m standing in the center of my own private silence, knowing the universe is about to crush me again.
ChapterTwo
Mara
Things were too simple and too complicated all at once.It took me a couple of days to reply to Ari, and then another couple before I worked up the courage to call the lawyer.Once I finally did, everything tumbled forward faster than I could organize my feelings about any of it.I wrapped up my project, packed our life into two worn suitcases, and flew back ...home?
All of it handled—and paid for—by the lawyer, who said it was coming out of my aunt’s estate.He also delivered the news I’d been avoiding hearing out loud: Aunt Lina was gone.An aneurysm, he said.Sudden.Unexpected.She’d been in good health.
The point is, I’m on my way home.
Though I hesitate to call it that.After so many years drifting from country to country, city to city, home feels like a borrowed word—something I once had but misplaced somewhere between grief and survival.
Seattle greets us with a stretch of gray sky, low and moody in a way that feels pointed.NotHello, welcome back.More likeYou again?I thought you’d sworn off of us.The familiarity pinches something in my chest—not pain exactly, but a recognition I’m not ready for.
Mila presses her forehead against the airplane window as we descend, smudging the glass with her nose.“Mom,” she says, deeply serious, “this city looks depressed.”
“It’s atmospheric,” I correct her, because good parents reframe negativity.I read that in some family magazine during a fourteen-hour flight from London to Sydney—worst flight of my life.“Very moody.Like a broody poet who journals on docks.”
She blinks.“You mean like you?”
“I don’t journal on docks.”
“You journal everywhere.”Mila rolls her eyes—tiny, exaggerated, and absolutely inherited from me.“Of course, you don’t write poetry.You just compose endless lists to oppress me.”
“How old are you, child?”I cock an eyebrow.“Some days you sound older than my mother.”I press a kiss to the top of her head before she can react.
“Grandma says I’m an old soul.”
Exactly why I did not pay for my mother to visit us last Christmas.She plants ideas in Mila’s mind like she’s sowing seeds in fertile soil, and it takes me months to undo the damage.My family has a flair for dramatics I’d prefer Mila never inherits.She’s different.Kinder.Brighter in a way that feels borrowed from someone she never got to grow up with.I stop that thought before it hurts.
The point is that I want her childhood to feel peaceful, uncomplicated.She’s already lost enough.
The plane touches down.Everyone else jumps up like they’re escaping, rushing the aisle as if they’ll vanish if they don’t get there first.Mila and I linger—me, dropping things left and right like my hands forgot their job.Her, sighing at me with the long-suffering patience of someone who clearly believes she’s the only responsible adult in this family.
She adjusts her backpack straps before zipping it with theatrical disappointment while I wrestle with a jacket sleeve that refuses to cooperate.This is why some days I’m not sure who should be filling out the guardian paperwork.
“This is a terrible time for us to be homeless,” she mutters while slipping her backpack on.
“We’re not homeless,” I insist, cheerful and confident and absolutely lying.“We’re just ...in transition.”
I haven’t told Mila that I’m currently between projects.
Okay—jobless.
There, I admitted it in my head.My agent is “working on it,” which is agent-speak forPlease don’t panic yet, Mara.She asked me to put together a portfolio because a gallery might be interested in my work.“It’s a nice way to stay in the country while we find you something,” she said.Sell a few pieces, live off that instead of out of a suitcase for once.
Adorable.Truly.
As if I have the luxury of floating around waiting for inspiration to strike when I have a child who depends entirely on my ability to buy groceries and pretend adulthood isn’t a performance I barely rehearsed for.I can’t just stand still because someone thinks I take good pictures.I need income.Stability.A way to pay for whatever hotel or rental we get at our next stop.
Most importantly, I’ve never let my child go without a roof, a plan, or at least the illusion that I know what I’m doing.
