Chapter 119. Returning Back to Florence

Elena POV

Two days now and I can’t stop thinking about my mom. I miss her so much. So so much that it hurts so bad.

I thought I will be fine but I’m realizing that grief doesn’t leave all at once.

It stays. It settles into my bones like winter, turning everything cold and slow and heavy.

This is the second time I’m feeling this way. First was when my dad died, and now it’s my mom.

I’m really now an orphan. A girl without no parents.

Days pass….at least I think they do. Time has stopped making sense. Morning looks the same as night. Food tastes like nothing. Voices sound distant, like they’re coming from another world I no longer belong to.

I barely speak. I barely move.

My stepbrothers hover around me like shadows….watching, worrying, whispering when they think I can’t hear.

They try to make me eat. Try to distract me. Try to pull me back into a world that no longer has my mother in it.

Nothing works.

I sit by