The house felt heavier with each passing day. Lissa had been staying in her old childhood home since her mother passed away six months ago.
"Six months" she said out loud and shook her head.
Her mother Annie, died peacefully in her home beside the river like she wanted. She had spent the last months of her mother's life taking care of her and making sure she had her daily dose of sunshine.
Lissa sat in the quiet of her childhood room, the faint scent of dust and old memories thick in the air. The house felt too small, too oppressive, a cage of her past that she had been trying so hard to escape. Every corner whispered secrets, every floorboard creaked under the weight of things left unsaid. She had come back here for a fresh start, but it felt as though the walls were closing in, trapping her in a story she had never wanted to finish.
The sun was setting, casting a soft golden light through the window. Her eyes drifted to the desk where her journal lay, a place where her deepest fears and secrets had once been scribbled in the dead of night. She hadn't opened it in years, but the urge was there now—an old habit, one that whispered that writing might still offer the release she craved.
With a deep breath, Lissa picked it up, feeling the familiar weight of it in her hands. She turned the pages carefully, the sound of the paper almost too loud in the silence. She couldn't help but glance at the inked words from her past—words that had been meant for no one but herself.
Her hands trembled slightly as she reached the last entry she had made before leaving town all those years ago.
June 17, 1994
I'm scared. So scared I can't breathe sometimes. I don't know how much longer I can keep pretending that everything's fine. I can't be here anymore. I have to go… and I can't ever come back.
Lissa slammed the journal shut, the sound reverberating through the room. She hated that part of herself—the one that had been so broken she couldn't face what was waiting for her. The part of her that had abandoned this town, abandoned everyone, to hide from her past.
But now… she was back.