“Just be calm,”

After the long conversation with Grandma in her room, I felt a weight settle on my chest. There were so many things she had told me, things that made me realize just how much my life was tangled with Samuel’s, whether I liked it or not. But more than that, I had to face the truth: I needed to talk with him. I couldn’t keep avoiding him forever. My future, and the care of Mrs. Idris, hung in the balance.

Walking down the hall, I found myself thinking over every possible scenario of how this conversation might go. Could I stay calm enough to get through it? Could I finally get Samuel to understand that his presence in my life was unwanted and that I had to move on? But then, what if he reacted badly? What if he exploded the way he used to? I couldn’t afford for things to go wrong, not with Mrs. Idris in the nursing home, her care under my guardianship. Samuel could easily make things difficult. He always knew how to disrupt my life in ways that hurt the most.

As I made my way downstairs