A month passed like a breath—slow and careful.
Sophie fell into a rhythm she hadn't expected to find. Mornings started with coffee and birdsong, not calendar alerts. Her phone stayed mostly off. Her inbox full of unread things that didn't feel urgent anymore.
She began to write again. Not for an audience, not for the approval of strangers—but for herself. Stories about her mother. About the town. About the quiet between loss and love. It felt like remembering how to breathe.
Jake was around more, but not in a way that crowded her. He brought groceries and bad jokes. Fixed things she didn't ask him to. Stayed for dinner when the silence between them said "stay."
He never pushed her. He never asked for a timeline. He just was. And that, somehow, was everything.
One Sunday morning, Sophie found herself back at the church her mother used to visit, though she wasn't religious. It was the stained glass, she said—the way light moved through it like forgiveness.
The door creaked open, familiar and foreign.
Inside, a handful of people hummed old hymns. Sophie sat in the back pew, not needing to sing. Just needing to be near something that felt like grace.
Afterward, the woman who used to run the bake sale every year offered her a lemon bar and a hug.
"Your mother would be proud of you," she said gently.
Sophie believed her.
At the lake, everything was green again. The trees no longer looked like skeletons. The breeze had a kind of kindness in it.
Sophie stood at the dock in the same place she had a month ago. Only now, she didn't feel like she was waiting for something to return. She was here.
Jake joined her again. No ceremony. No grand gestures. Just two people standing beside each other, like they always had when the world went quiet.
"Want to come with me next weekend?" he asked. "Dad's birthday. I could use some moral support."
Sophie nodded. "I'd like that."
They stood a little longer, and then he took her hand. Not in a desperate way. Not like a drowning man. Just like someone who knew the tide had finally turned.
Later, she sat at her mother's desk and pulled out a fresh sheet of paper. Not to write to her mother—but to herself.
She wrote:
You are still becoming.
You are allowed to bloom slowly.
The people who love you will wait.
She folded the page and placed it beneath her pillow.
A different kind of keepsake.
As the sun dipped behind the trees and light spilled amber across the porch, Sophie looked at the house—peeling paint, crooked shutters, tired steps—and thought, I can love you again.
And maybe, that was enough.