Page 2 of Never After Us
That strange little tug in your stomach—the one that whispers something’s about to shift?Yeah.That.It slips in before I even read the subject line.
The email comes in while I’m sitting in a hotel room in Lisbon—somewhere between Mila wrapping up her math assignment and me pretending cold coffee is a lifestyle choice.The yellow morning light spills through the thin hotel curtains, painting the room in a warm haze.Outside, an old tram grinds up the hill, its rumble threading through the quiet between Mila’s pencil scratches and my slow-motion spiral, grounding me in a morning that refuses to cooperate with my denial.
My inbox is full of ignored messages: clients, my agent, editors, and friends who worry I’ve vanished into a creative black hole.
Which, to be fair, happens.Sometimes by accident.Sometimes by pure, intentional avoidance—my own disappearing act worthy of a magician with questionable decision-making skills.I blame life.I blame parenting.I blame whoever invented the concept of juggling careers, motherhood, and the illusion of balance as if it were real.
I mean, I have things to do.Pictures to take.Bills to pay.A daughter to raise.Homeschooling, which sounded so whimsical and bohemian in my head, is actually exhausting.There’s curriculum, and science experiments, and math that looks nothing like the math I grew up with.Honestly, trying to teach Mila while dragging her around the world feels like signing up for an Olympic sport I never trained for.A bitch of a sport, if I’m being truly honest with myself.
Not that I’d ever admit that publicly.Nope.If anyone asks, I’ll smile with my cheerful I’ve-got-this expression and insist it’s so fucking easy.Emphasis on the “so fucking easy” part.It’s like breathing.Or following a MapQuest printout without getting hopelessly lost.
In any case, I freeze the moment I read the subject from Ariadne, my best friend:URGENT: Regarding Your Aunt Lina.
My brain stumbles over it.Aunt Lina and I haven’t spoken in years—not since she married that rich man and promptly cut off the entire family like we were some inconvenient subscription service she kept forgetting to cancel.I can’t remember if I was twelve or fifteen when she drifted out of my life, but before that, she was the “cool aunt”—seventeen years older than me, sometimes more like a reckless big sister who skipped curfew and knew about music than ...an adult figure.
We were close ...until we weren't.
And fine, that’s not entirely true.She did reach out when he—the love of my life—died.But I ignored her message.I ignored everything.I erased whole sections of my world in those months because breathing hurt, and grief had me convinced I could outrun pain if I narrowed my life enough.
Yet, here I am now, staring at an email from Ariadne with the word “urgent,” like my aunt still has any right to cause a tremor in my chest.I stare at it longer than I should, long enough for my stomach to drop in that quiet, low swoop I insist I don’t experience anymore.It feels like the universe tugged on a thread I’ve been pretending wasn’t loose.
It’s not about my aunt.
It’s about the old life I abandoned when grief hollowed me out.
“Mom, you’re doing the thing again,” Mila says without looking up, pencil moving across her workbook.
“What thing?”I ask, lifting the cup to my mouth and sipping the cold, bitter coffee like it’s totally normal behavior.
It’s absolutely not.
“The staring-into-the-void thing.”She flips a page with theatrical annoyance, the same flair she uses when judging my dating apps.“It’s very emotionally frazzled of you.”
I drag my eyes away from the screen and glance toward the balcony.Lisbon rooftops stretch in patchwork terracotta under a pale blue sky, the kind that almost convinces you life is softer than it is.
Mila says “emotionally frazzled,” the way other kids say “ew.”She’s almost nine going on thirty-five, a strange little miracle who can sound wiser than me one minute and collapse into giggles the next.It’s a blend that confuses me, humbles me, and occasionally convinces me I’m failing motherhood while simultaneously crushing it.That contradiction is stored under:Lies I Tell Myself to Stay Functional.
I finally click open the email.Ariadne is explaining—too casually—that a lawyer is looking for me.A lawyer.For what?I didn’t want to talk to Aunt Lina when she left a message on my answering machine years ago, so why would I suddenly want to talk to someone who bills thousands of dollars by the hour?
“What the fu—” I choke on the rest and switch lanes.“What in the fulfilling universe does a lawyer want with me?”
Mila looks up like she’s been waiting her whole life for this moment.“Tax fraud?Identity theft?”
“Ha.Very funny.”I give her a look, though a tiny part of me wonders why she even knows what tax fraud is.Probably from overhearing conversations she shouldn’t, because she’s always in the room when I think she’s not.She collects information the way some kids collect stickers.Then again, it could be from all the research she does about her future.Like:Which careers require the least math?Or,how early can one reasonably start college without being labeled a prodigy?
She’s almost nine and somehow already planning her retirement already.
I should tell her to slow down, to enjoy being a kid before life starts handing out responsibilities like unwanted souvenirs.But then I catch my reflection in the dark laptop screen—the outline of a woman who pretends her life is color-coded and perfectly handled—and it hits me that Mila probably learned the whole overachiever routine from watching me fake competence on a daily basis.
The truth?I don’t have anything together.Not really.If I sit down every night and make enough lists to wallpaper a small room, I can usually get through the next day without causing an international incident.And honestly, isn’t that the bare minimum?Keeping us afloat, staying one step ahead of disaster, doing my best in this shiny new millennium while trying not to ruin an eight-year-old who trusts me with her entire world?
“What if she registered a company under your name?”Mila asks, far too casually.“Like in that Tom Cruise movie?”
I squint at her.“Where did you watch a Tom Cruise movie?”The parental horror is instant.“That’s not appropriate.”
“A few months ago.It was the babysitter in Paris.”She grins with full gremlin pride.
Okay, that babysitter won’t be contacted again if I get another job over there.Not that it’ll fix anything right now.
