Chapter 19
These past five years have been torture for me too. Watching Stella barely survive-it was eating me alive. I tried to make it right, sent her money tons of times, but she kept sending it back…”
‘I couldn’t even face her when she died. I was so fucking scared she’d hate me.”
Sophia was crying hard: “I’m the piece of shit here.”
Sophia packed up and left, only taking the hoodie and jeans she’d shown up in.
Ars. Reed sat alone in the big empty house, completely destroyed.
tella had grown up in Riverside Heights, but after Sophia moved in, that house was packed with too many memories of Stella.
o they’d sold the Heights place and bought this one instead.
When Stella was little, she was obsessed with raising silkworms in the backyard. She’d beg the neighbors to bring mulberry leaves whenever they visited their
ometown.
he remembered when Stella was eight and dumped an entire pack of Orbeez in the bathtub before school. The nanny discovered them that evening when she rent to run Stella’s bath-the little water beads had exploded everywhere.
nd that porch swing where Stella would spend hours sipping boba tea.
Then Stella was ten, Mrs. Reed caught the flu and mentioned wanting some chicken soup.
was the middle of winter and their housekeeper was off for the holidays. That crazy kid hopped on her bike and rode to the store, coming back all scraped up om wiping out on the ice.
Then her dad asked why she didn’t clean up her cuts first, she just said:
didn’t want Mom to be hungry…”
Irs. Reed gripped the DNA report, mumbling those words over and over: “Didn’t want Mom to be hungry…”
lake sat in his car, watching the snow pile up, his eyes growing darker.
le wondered if it snowed in heaven.
tella always hated the cold.
veryone around him kept telling Blake to move on, saying Stella would want him to live a good life.
o he tried.
He threw himself into work, getting promoted from patrol officer to squad captain in just a year.
But every night, he’d go to that spicy chicken place near campus and order the extra hot.
He couldn’t handle spicy food before. Used to love watching Stella eat it until she was sweating, then he’d hand her water.
Now he couldn’t even feel the heat anymore,
Like he’d just gotten numb to it.
In that moment, he felt this strange sense of unreality.
Would there be a day when he’d get used to Stella being gone too?
The more he thought about it, the more afraid he became.
By November 2025, Blake still couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he’d desperately try to remember exactly what Stella looked like. He couldn’t rest until he could perfectly picture her face.
Blake tossed and turned, finally sitting up and swallowing half a bottle of sleeping pills in one go.
Now he could finally get some real sleep.
Maybe, he thought, he’d see Stella in his dreams.
He drifted off, not knowing how long he slept, but Stella never appeared.
If he couldn’t dream of her, he didn’t want to wake up at all.
When Blake came to, he was in the hospital.
His mentor since the academy, Sergeant Martinez, stood by his bed looking pissed and terrified: “Blake, what the actual fuck?”
If you’re going through shit, call one of us! Hit a bar, talk it out. How much are you bottling up in there?”
What’s so goddamn bad that you need to down half a bottle of Ambien?”
What the hell were you thinking?”
Blake could see the old man’s face was wet with tears.
His voice was raspy: “Martinez, I just couldn’t sleep.”
le honestly hadn’t been trying to check out. Really, he just… needed to knock himself out.
