CHAPTER 098

AUDREY'S POV

The room was quieter now, but the silence wasn’t empty—it was full of everything we hadn’t said yet. I was still sitting on the couch beside my mother, still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I was sitting next to her, breathing the same air, after more than two decades.

“I don’t understand why you would feel this way,” she finally said, her voice a blend of confusion and pa