Book Six: Chapter 174

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” She kicked at a clump of snow. “What I just learned, I...it’s like there’s a storm inside of me, and I can’t control it. All my thoughts are just spinning around, and when I try to examine them, they...” she gestured helplessly and pulled her knees to her chest before burying her face in them. “I don’t know what to do,” she groaned.

“It’s hard.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t know this, but my childhood was pretty messed up. My mom was...kind of like the Krampus. She would say and do terrible things. Even after she was gone, all I could do was hate her for the things she did.

“However, the Ghost of Christmas Past, not the one in there, the main one, or whatever, they showed me a memory from when I was very little. It was before my dad died. My mom was...normal. Happy, even. She was reading me a book, acting like a mom should. During this trip down memory lane, I learned something about her that ch