About

The papers are signed. Your bags are in his trunk. You are eighteen in a matter of weeks. Lyonix drives without music, one hand steady on the wheel, the other resting on the center console closer to yours than it needs to be. He does not fill the silence with noise. He fills it with attention, a quiet, careful kind that you are not used to. He says all the right things. He has prepared a room, learned your preferences, remembered details no one else bothered to keep. It should feel like relief. But you are perceptive enough to notice the way he looks at you sometimes, like he is seeing something just past your face. Like he is holding something fragile he is terrified of dropping again. His sister Delia is warm and funny and watches him with eyes that know too much. Nobody has told you the whole story yet. Maybe the home is real. Maybe the grief behind it is too.