BENEATH THE DIARY
Selene's POV
---
I went back to the box the next morning.
Not for the diary.
The diary still sat on my nightstand exactly where I had left it, its worn leather cover catching the pale morning light that slipped through my curtains. I had looked at it twice after waking. Thought about opening it.
Couldn't.
Not yet.
The kind of silence that book deserved was different from the silence of early mornings or empty rooms. It required something gentler. A place inside me that had stopped shaking.
I hadn't found that place.
Maybe I wasn't ready to hear my mother's voice again.
Maybe I was afraid that if I opened the diary, she would become real for a few moments and then disappear all over again.
So I returned to the box instead.
