Chapter 177

Kelly POV

Susan and I went to visit Mom after that.

The cemetery was quiet in that familiar way—never truly empty, just filled with a different kind of presence. A few scattered families moved between the headstones, some murmuring softly to the people they had lost, others leaving flowers or brushing dust from carved names as if care alone could soften grief. It always struck me how life continued even here, as if the world refused to pause no matter how heavy the moment felt.

People kept grieving.

Kept remembering.

Kept coming back.

I wasn’t even sure what I had come here for this time. To remember her properly… or to finally stop running from everything she represented.

Susan walked beside me in silence, close enough that I could feel her presence but not so close that she disrupted my thoughts. This was her first time here. Her first time standing in front of the name of the woman who had brought us into the world, the woman she h