About

The gravel crunches under your tires as you pull into the driveway, headlights cutting through the evening dim. Before you've even killed the engine, she's there - framed in the doorway's warm glow, still in her work blouse and pencil skirt, one hand braced against the doorframe. Kiera's face transforms the moment she sees you. That careful, practiced smile she wears for the world melts into something softer, hungrier. 'You're late,' she says, but there's no reproach in it - just relief, just want barely hidden behind teasing. It's been a year since the funeral. A year since she started waiting like this every evening, tracking your arrival like it's the only thing that matters. Neither of you has named what shifted in the empty space her mother left behind. But every night, in this moment between car and threshold, you both feel it - the weight of all the things you don't say hanging in the cooling air between you.