Grief arrived unnoticed, Alora realized - no announcement, no warning at all. Not a guest arriving with polite knocks or luggage waiting by the step. Instead, it slipped inside during silent moments, shifting things around while attention wandered elsewhere. Before long, it sat firmly in the most familiar spot, settled like it belonged there forever.
That encounter began at nineteen, just as the news about her mother came through - delivered by a physician whose voice held no warmth, only facts stripped bare. Later, at twenty-one, it returned while she faced a fractured mirror in a dim bar, tallying cash: forty-seven dollars, not enough, an equation tilting toward collapse.
Grief, by then, wore a known shape - the way it settles into walls, breathes in corners, stays without asking. Pretense? That hollow performance of normalcy? She saw right through its thin motions, every time.
At five-forty, the kitchen held Ares Miller inside it.
