08 Feb To See What You Have Lost

PART I

Eliza Harper had stopped counting the days since the last funeral.

The first one—her father’s—had been marked with the sharp, disorienting pain of sudden loss. The heart attack had come without warning, dropping him to the kitchen floor before she could do anything but watch as paramedics performed chest compressions on his cooling body. The second loss, her uncle, had been an accident—senseless and cruel, a head-on collision on a rain-slick highway. The third, her sister Sophie, had been expected. That was supposed to make it easier. It hadn’t. Watching a sixteen-year-old wither away in a hospital bed, skin stretched thin over delicate bones, was something no amount of mental preparation could soften.

Now, grief was something she wore like an old coat—heavy, familiar, suffocating.

Her mother had called that morning, her voice careful, as if testing the ground beneath her. “Eliza, sweetheart, I was thinking we could have dinner this week. Just the two of us. I know things have been hard, but—”

“I’ve been busy,” Eliza had interrupted, though it wasn’t true. She wasn’t busy. She had been ignoring texts, declining invitations, and spending most of her time alone in the greenhouse lab she worked at, surrounded by things that didn’t speak or ask how she was feeling.

Marian sighed on the other end of the line, but she didn’t push. She never did. “Just let me know, okay? I love you.”

Eliza hadn’t responded before hanging up.

She had driven to work in silence, the morning’s overcast sky smearing gray across the horizon, her hands gripping the wheel harder than necessary. The greenhouse, a sprawling structure of glass and steel, should have felt like a sanctuary. She had always found comfort in the quiet hum of humidity, the sharp scent of soil, and the careful precision of cultivation. But these days, even her plants seemed indifferent.

The mistake had happened in the afternoon. She had been working on a propagation experiment, cutting sections from a rare climbing vine to encourage new growth. It was delicate work, requiring a steady hand, but she had been distracted, her mind slipping like a fraying rope.

The scalpel slipped.

She hissed in pain as the blade grazed her palm, a thin line of blood beading along the cut.

“Damn it!” she cried.

Eliza set the scalpel down, pressing a tissue against the wound. She should have been more careful. She knew better. With a frustrated sigh, she swept the plant debris into the trash. That was when she noticed it. In the bottom of the propagation tray, half-buried beneath discarded leaves, was something she hadn’t placed there.

A seed.

It was unlike any seed she had ever seen—almost black, but with an unnatural sheen. It was small, smooth, and oddly warm to the touch. Frowning, she picked it up, turning it over between her fingers. There was no logical reason for it to be there. The greenhouse adhered to strict protocols—every species was accounted for, and no cross-contamination was allowed.

Taped to the underside of the tray was a small slip of paper. The handwriting—uneven and shaky—was unfamiliar:
“To see what you have lost, plant this.”

Her first thought was that someone was playing a joke. Her second was that she didn’t care.

Eliza should have tossed it in the trash, dismissed it as nothing, and moved on with her day. Instead, she slipped the seed into the pocket of her lab coat.

That night, she planted it.

It was a thoughtless act, done more out of impulse than anything else. She found an old ceramic pot tucked away in the corner of her apartment, filled it with soil, and pressed the seed into the dirt with the tip of her finger. She didn’t know why she did it—maybe because the message had unsettled her. Maybe because something had broken through the dull, suffocating haze of grief for the first time in months.

As she watered the soil, a familiar scent drifted through the air. Eliza froze.

The scent was impossible. Lavender. Sophie’s lavender. She swallowed hard, shaking her head. It was just her imagination.

The seed sat silently beneath the soil, unmoving.

With a sigh, Eliza turned off the light and went to bed, unaware that by morning, everything would change.

PART II

Eliza woke to the smell of earth and rain. For a moment, she wasn’t sure if she was dreaming. The scent was overwhelming, like she had fallen asleep in the greenhouse. But as she opened her eyes, the sight above her drove the last traces of sleep from her mind.

A massive vine, thick as an oak and the color of deep jade, had erupted through her apartment floor and ceiling, twisting up through the rafters. Its roots had split the wooden floorboards apart like brittle bones, curling outward in unnatural spirals. The walls were cracked, tendrils slithering across them like ivy gone rogue, forcing their way into corners and creeping toward the windows.

Eliza’s mind reeled. This wasn’t possible. She pushed herself upright, nearly tripping over the blankets that had tangled around her legs. The room pulsed with life, the vine’s surface shifting as though something stirred beneath the thick green skin. Wind rushed past her, and she realized with a start that the ceiling had been torn away completely. Where there should have been drywall and insulation, there was nothing but open sky—deep twilight, with streaks of purple and navy blue stretching out like bruises against the horizon.

The air felt impossibly crisp. Too clean. Too different. Eliza stumbled forward, her bare feet brushing against the vine. It was warm beneath her fingertips, like living flesh, and she instinctively pulled her hand back.

Then, she noticed the scent. Not just the scent of soil and green things, but of something more. Her father’s aftershave. Her uncle’s pipe smoke.

And—

Her stomach twisted.

Lavender, again. Sophie’s lavender. Unforgettable.

A voice whispered from above, soft as the wind through the trees. “Eliza.”

The voice was distant but unmistakable. Her father’s voice.

This was a dream, she rationalized. It had to be a dream.

But the scent, the voice—the warmth of the vine beneath her hands.

Her father was gone, buried six feet beneath the cold, uncaring earth. She knew this. Yet here, above her, was the sound of his voice, drifting down from somewhere far beyond the clouds.

Eliza swallowed, her throat dry. The vine stretched up, spiraling higher and higher, disappearing into the twilight. There was no logical reason to think it went anywhere at all. But the whisper called again, low and insistent, “Come up, sweetheart. We’ve missed you.”

This was insanity. She should have called someone—the fire department, her mother. She should have done anything other than what she was considering.

But then, there was another whisper.

“Eliza… hurry.”

This one stopped her cold.

Sophie.

For a long moment, she stood frozen, her mind caught in a brutal, silent battle. The logical part of her—what remained of the scientist, the botanist, the woman who believed in structure and reason—was screaming at her to turn away, to leave the apartment, call her mother, and get help.

But the other part, the one that had been hollowed out by loss and regret, the part that still woke up expecting to hear Sophie padding barefoot into the kitchen for tea, the part that would have done anything for one more moment—that part stepped forward.

She reached for the vine. Her fingers dug into the ridges along its sides.

And she began to climb.

The ascent was easier than it should have been. The vine’s surface was firm but pliable, the grooves perfectly shaped for her fingers and the arches of her feet. There was no wind, no resistance, nothing to shake her balance as she scaled higher and higher, her apartment vanishing below.

The world was silent, save for the soft rustling of leaves far above.

She climbed for what felt like hours, her arms burning. Yet she didn’t stop. At some point, she realized she was no longer climbing into the sky. She was climbing through it. The color around her darkened, shifting from twilight into something more like deep water—a midnight void stretching outward in all directions. She glanced down, but her apartment was gone. There was nothing beneath her but endless dark.

Panic threatened to creep in, but before she could let herself understand the horror of what she had done, she saw the first hints of light above. Not sunlight, not city lights—something else. A glow, soft and golden, like the light of a home long-forgotten. It beckoned.

She climbed the last few feet, her muscles screaming, and pulled herself up onto solid ground.

Eliza took in the sight before her. She stood on the edge of a forest. Not a normal forest, not like the ones she had hiked with her father in the summers of her childhood, but something older. Ancient. The trees were impossibly tall, their trunks thick with moss and gnarled roots, their canopies stretching toward a sky that wasn’t quite a sky at all. It looked painted—a dusky, perpetual twilight, neither day nor night, the hues shifting in slow, imperceptible waves. And beyond the trees, nestled within the heart of the forest, was a house.

Eliza’s stomach lurched. It was her childhood home. Every detail was perfect—from the faded blue paint to the chipped stone pathway leading up to the porch. The windows glowed with warm light, and the scent of roasted coffee and pipe smoke drifted through the air.

It wasn’t possible.

She stepped forward, feet moving of their own accord, her hands trembling, and the front door creaked open.

And there, standing in the doorway, was her father.

His eyes shone with quiet warmth, the same warmth she had ached for since the day they lowered his casket into the ground. A smile stretched across his face.

“Eliza, sweetheart,” he said softly, “you’re home.”

She stumbled forward, her vision blurring. Her father opened his arms—and she fell into them.

The embrace was real, solid and warm. She choked out the only thing she could. “Dad?”

His hand smoothed over her hair, just like it used to. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Everything’s okay now.”

Behind him, inside the house, her late uncle grinned at her from the couch, a glass of whiskey in his hand. And standing at the top of the stairs, watching her with bright, eager eyes… was Sophie. Eliza’s legs nearly buckled.

Her sister’s voice was exactly as she remembered it—soft and sweet, carrying a hint of laughter. “I’ve been waiting for you, Eliza.”

The last thing she noticed, before stepping inside, was the whisper of wind through the trees behind her.

Something inhuman stirred in the forest—watching, waiting.

But Eliza didn’t turn around. She didn’t see it.

She stepped inside, and the door closed behind her.

PART III

The warmth of the house enveloped her like a familiar blanket, thick with the scent of roasted coffee, pipe smoke, and something sweeter—vanilla, maybe, or cinnamon. The lighting was soft, golden, perfect—the kind of glow that only existed in the rose-tinted corners of memory.

Eliza stood in the entryway, her hands trembling at her sides. Her father was still smiling. His eyes crinkled at the corners, just like they always had when he was proud of her, or amused by some clumsy mistake she’d made as a child.

“You look pale, sweetheart,” he said gently, reaching out to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Come, sit down. You must be exhausted.”

Her mind screamed that this was impossible—that she had climbed into the sky, into nowhere, that she had abandoned reason the moment she reached for that vine. But another part of her, the part that had spent the last year drowning in loss, in cold, unrelenting silence, desperately wanted to believe.

She let her father guide her to the couch. Uncle Peter grinned at her from the other side of the room, a whiskey glass dangling from his fingers. “It’s about time you got here, kid! We were starting to think you got lost.”

She let out a shaky breath. “I—how is this—?”

“Don’t strain yourself with all that,” Peter said, waving a dismissive hand. “You’re home now. That’s all that matters.”

Home. She hadn’t realized how much she had been craving that word.

A giggle from the staircase made her stiffen. She turned just in time to see Sophie bounding down the steps, bare feet barely touching the wood, her dark hair swinging over her shoulders.

Sophie, sixteen years old forever.

She threw her arms around Eliza, holding her tight, her familiar lavender scent wrapping around them both. Eliza clutched her sister, pressing her face into her hair.

Sophie was here. Alive. Whole. The machines, the hospital rooms, the unbearable last days—all of it had been a mistake.

“I thought I lost you,” Eliza whispered.

Sophie pulled back just enough to grin up at her. “You did.” The words were so casual, so wrong, that Eliza almost pulled away. But then Sophie laughed, light and musical, and any unease slipped away like mist.

She was here.

That was all that mattered.

* * * * * *

The first few days—if they were days—passed in a dreamlike haze. She never felt tired. Never felt hungry. But she still ate. The meals were perfect, exactly the way she remembered them—her father’s Sunday roast, Peter’s butter-drenched garlic bread, Sophie’s favorite strawberry tarts.

The conversations felt effortless, as if no time had passed at all. Her father asked about her work, nodding along with her rambling explanations of propagation cycles and plant hybridization. Uncle Peter told the same jokes he had when she was younger, laughter spilling from his lips like old songs.

Sophie clung to her, always within reach, laughing, teasing, just as she had been before the sickness hollowed her out. And yet—there were cracks. Small things, easy to dismiss at first.

A photograph on the mantle that she didn’t remember taking.

A room at the end of the hallway that no one ever entered.

A moment, just before she fell asleep, where Sophie’s breath hitched—not a sigh or snore, but something mechanical and too precise.

And then there were the nights.

The first time she woke to the low, guttural howling from the forest, she thought she had imagined it. It wasn’t the sound of the wind nor the calls of wolves or owls or anything that belonged to the world she knew. This was something else—something hungry.

She sat up in bed, her skin cold despite the thick blanket around her. The house was silent. But the howling—the low, wretched, twisting sound—was growing louder.

She moved to the window, pressing a hand to the cool glass. The forest beyond the house seemed thicker and darker than before, as if the trees had crept closer while she wasn’t looking. And in the distance, just at the edge of the treeline, something shifted—a shape—a figure. Too thin, too still.

It was watching the house. Watching her.

She took a step back. Behind her, a voice murmured, soft and coaxing. “Don’t go outside, Eliza.”

She turned sharply. Her father stood in the doorway, his silhouette framed by the golden light of the hall. His face was calm and unreadable.

“There’s nothing for you out there,” he said gently. She opened her mouth to protest, to say something rational about how she was a scientist and wasn’t the type to be frightened by the dark.

But she was—and she had been, ever since she was a child. And her father—her father—was standing here, telling her it was safer inside. So she nodded, and let him guide her back to bed. And when she closed her eyes, she ignored the whisper of leaves against the windowpane. Ignored the feeling that something was pacing at the edge of the trees, monitoring her every move.

* * * * * *

The second time she woke to the sound, she wasn’t alone.

Sophie was sitting at the foot of her bed, knees drawn to her chest, staring at the window.

Eliza sat up slowly. “Soph?”

Her sister didn’t move.

The howling outside was quieter this time. Closer.

“Sophie,” she tried again. This time, her sister turned to look at her. Her face was wrong. Her expression was blank, her eyes dark and unfocused. A trick of the light, Eliza told herself. Just the shadows playing across her features.

Sophie blinked, and for one terrible second, her mouth moved without opening. “They were waiting for you, Eliza.”

The voice that came out was hers, but not hers. Eliza froze. The house groaned around them, the walls stretching and shifting.

Then Sophie smiled, her face smoothing back into something warm and normal. “You talk in your sleep,” she said, her voice light again. “You were mumbling something about Mom.”

The word sent a sharp spike through her chest. Mom. Why hadn’t she thought of her mother before now? The realization made her stomach twist. How long had it been since she remembered the world below?

Sophie slid off the bed, stretching her arms. “Come on,” she said. “Dad’s making pancakes.”

Eliza hesitated. For the first time since she arrived, the warmth of the house didn’t feel comforting. It felt smothering.

She followed Sophie downstairs, but as she passed the hallway mirror, she caught a glimpse of something that shouldn’t be. Her sister’s reflection was still smiling—even though Sophie had already turned away.

PART IV

Eliza could no longer remember how long she had been in the house. The passage of time had become something fluid, something unsteady. The sky beyond the trees never changed—it remained locked in a permanent state of dusk, the light neither brightening nor fading.

She tried, at first, to measure the days by counting the meals, but even that had proven unreliable. The food never ran out. The plates were always full, the coffee always steaming, as if no time had passed at all between one moment and the next. That should have unsettled her. She should have been more concerned.

But the house was so warm, her father’s laughter so genuine, and Sophie’s presence so intoxicatingly familiar that it was easier not to question it.

She barely thought about the world below anymore. Barely thought about her job, her apartment, the endless cycle of mornings spent alone and nights spent staring at the ceiling.

Her mother had been calling her every day before she climbed the vine. Hadn’t she?

Her mind grasped for the memory, but it was like trying to hold onto mist—slipping, shifting, disappearing before she could solidify it into something real.

There was a knock at the door. She looked up, startled. Her father and Uncle Peter had been in the middle of some conversation about fishing, but neither of them reacted to the sound. They went on speaking as if nothing had happened, Peter chuckling into his drink, her father nodding along with a contented hum.

Eliza frowned. The knock came again.

She rose from the couch, hesitant, her fingers curling into her palms. “Did you hear that?” she asked.

Her father smiled at her. “Sit back down, sweetheart. It’s just the wind.”

Eliza’s frown deepened. The wind didn’t knock.

Another knock. Louder this time.

Sophie appeared in the doorway, her expression neutral. “Eliza,” she said softly, “come help me with something in the kitchen.”

Eliza glanced at the door, then back at her sister. Something wasn’t right. Sophie had never spoken like that before—not in life, not in death. There was something rehearsed about it, more like the echo of a memory than something real.

“Eliza,” Sophie said again.

The knock came once more. Eliza turned toward the door, her feet moving before she could fully process the decision.

Sophie stepped forward, blocking her path. “Don’t,” she whispered.

Eliza froze and stared at her sister. Sophie had never told her no before. She had never looked at her like that before—pleading, wide-eyed, as if Eliza was about to step off the edge of a cliff.

The knock came again, harder, almost urgent. A voice followed, muffled by the wood, barely audible.

“Eliza?” it called. “Eliza, are you there?”

She knew that voice. Every muscle in her body tensed. Her mother.

The sound of it sent a shudder through her chest, a ripple in something deep, something real.

She turned to Sophie. Her sister didn’t move. Her father and Uncle Peter were still talking, still laughing, as if nothing outside this house existed.

Eliza took a step toward the door. Sophie’s expression collapsed into something desperate. “She doesn’t belong here,” Sophie whispered.

Eliza’s stomach turned. The knocking continued, harder now, more insistent.

“Eliza! Please!” Her mother sounded close. Too close.

Eliza’s throat tightened. “I have to—”

“She’s not real,” Sophie said.

Eliza faltered. Her mother was real. She had to be. She had called Eliza before she climbed the vine, before the seed, before— Hadn’t she?

The thought swayed, unsteady.

“Please, Eliza.” The voice beyond the door cracked, strained with something raw and desperate.

A sharp pain lanced through Eliza’s skull. Her vision blurred and split, as if pulled apart at the seams. Images flickered in her mind—her mother’s hands on her shoulders, shaking her, sobbing, her apartment, her job, her name being spoken over and over as if someone was trying to keep her from slipping into a place she could never come back from.

Sophie reached for her. Her hands were too cold.

Eliza pulled free from her grasp and threw open the door.

* * * * * *

The world beyond the threshold was wrong.

The forest and sky weren’t there anymore.

There was only the hospital room—and her mother, her real mother, sitting in a chair beside the bed, clutching Eliza’s limp hand in hers. Her face was worn with exhaustion, her eyes rimmed red.

The doorframe around her fractured, splintering into something impossible—half of it leading to the warmth of the house, the other opening into the white, sterile light of reality. Eliza swooned.

Her father’s voice—the version of him that had never died—spoke behind her, calm and patient. “You don’t have to go back, sweetheart.”

She turned. They were all watching her.

Sophie.

Peter.

Her father.

Eliza looked at them, at the warm glow, at the laughter, at the place where no one had to die, no one had to grieve, no one had to suffer through the unbearable weight of being left behind. Then she looked at her mother—real, tired, and alive. And she stepped forward.

The house screamed. Not a sound, not exactly—something deeper. It reverberated through her bones and rattled through her skull, splitting through the air like the sound of shattering glass. She felt cold hands grab at her, dragging her backward into the warmth.

Eliza screamed, fought, and threw herself through the doorway.

The moment she crossed the threshold, she collapsed.

* * * * * *

The light was too bright.

She gasped, choking, her lungs burning. Somewhere close, she heard a familiar, insistent beeping noise.

She was in the hospital.

For a moment, she was certain she had fallen through dimensions, that she was still trapped between two places, and that this wasn’t real either. But her mother’s hands clutched hers, trembling.

A sob broke from Marian Harper’s lips, her fingers digging into Eliza’s palm as if anchoring her to this world. “Eliza,” she whispered, her voice raw.

Eliza turned her head toward her, the movement slow and sluggish, her body too heavy and too real.

Her mother’s face wasn’t perfect. Her hair was grayer than before, the lines around her mouth deeper; her expression was worn and weary. She looked like someone who had been watching their child slip away for weeks.

Eliza tried to speak, but her throat was raw and useless.

Marian let out another choked sob, pressing their hands together. “You came back.”

Eliza blinked slowly, disoriented.

There was no vine. No twilight sky. No house—

There was no Sophie. No father waiting for her with open arms.

The grief hit her like a fist to the ribs, cracking her open.

She closed her eyes, and for the first time in a long, long time, she let herself feel it.

PART V

The days after waking felt unreal in a way that was different from the house beyond the vine. The world of hospital walls and quiet murmurs, of beeping machines and the sterile scent of antiseptic, should have been familiar. But after spending what felt like an eternity in that other place, this reality felt alien, unnatural, and inhospitable.

Eliza had spent hours staring at the ceiling, feeling the heaviness of her body, the way her fingers trembled when she lifted them. She wasn’t sure if it was from weakness or from something deeper, but something had fractured inside her. Of that, she was certain.

All the while, her mother hadn’t left her bedside. Not once. Marian Harper had always been a strong woman, but now there was something brittle about her, something stretched too thin. She ran her fingers over Eliza’s knuckles absently, as if grounding herself in the movement.

“How long?” Eliza finally asked, her voice hoarse.

Marian blinked, as if she had been caught between sleep and wakefulness. She sat up straighter, gripping Eliza’s hand.

“Seventeen days,” her mother replied.

Eliza felt a cold pulse in her stomach. “I was… gone for that long?”

“You were here, but you weren’t,” Marian said, her voice thin. “You collapsed at the funeral home. You weren’t responsive. You—” She swallowed, looking down. “The doctors said it was a dissociative episode. That sometimes grief can… can push people into places in their minds where they can’t find their way back.”

Eliza licked her cracked lips. “The vine.”

Her mother frowned. “What?”

“In my apartment,” Eliza said. “It—it grew overnight. It broke through my ceiling, and I climbed—” She stopped. Even saying it aloud sounded ridiculous.

Marian exhaled slowly, rubbing her forehead. “Sweetheart, there was no vine.”

A shiver ran through Eliza’s spine. “Then how did I—”

“You were unconscious,” her mother said, interrupting. “You weren’t answering my calls, so I came over. You were lying on the floor in your living room, curled up like you were sleeping. I—I thought you were dead.”

Eliza’s lips parted, but no words came.

She had climbed the vine. She had felt the bark beneath her fingers, the wind rushing against her skin as she ascended into that other sky. She had seen her father, heard his laughter, had held Sophie in her arms. It wasn’t possible that none of it had happened.

Her mother squeezed her hand. “The doctors gave you something to help stabilize you. They think it was stress, exhaustion—” She hesitated. “And the medications, they think that might’ve contributed.”

A deep unease settled into Eliza’s ribs. She remembered the pills, the ones prescribed after Sophie died, the ones she had taken sporadically at best. She had hated the way they made her feel—too numb, too detached. But in the weeks leading up to her collapse, she had started taking them again.

Had they done this to her? Had she fallen into some chemical fog, where grief twisted into hallucination?

The thought unsettled her, but not as much as what she could still feel—the memory of her father’s arms around her, the weight of Sophie’s head against her shoulder.

Could a delusion leave a shadow that deep?

* * * * * *

Her recovery was slow.

Physically, she was fine.  She was malnourished and dehydrated, but otherwise fine. It was her mind that had to relearn how to move forward.

The house in the woods still clung to the edges of her thoughts, a place that no longer existed but still felt more real than the world she woke up to.

She didn’t talk about it at first. When the psychiatrist—Dr. Carter Wells—asked her what she had experienced, she found herself unable to explain it in any way that didn’t make her sound lost. Instead, she gave him the version that made sense.

“I was… somewhere else,” she told him. “It was a dream, I think. But it felt real.”

“Grief can do that,” he said simply. “Especially when it’s layered, unresolved. Your mind needed an escape, so it created one.”

“But why them?” she asked, gripping the blanket draped over her legs. “Why my dad, my uncle, my sister?”

Dr. Wells studied her for a long moment. “Because they were safe. They were the people you loved most. The mind, when it’s under distress, doesn’t always build nightmares. Sometimes, it builds comfort. A place where pain doesn’t exist.”

Eliza exhaled, shaking her head. “Then why was it so hard to leave?”

“Because that’s the thing about grief,” he said. “It’s heavy, but in a way that becomes familiar. Losing it means moving forward, and moving forward means leaving them behind.”

The words made something in her chest tighten. “But they weren’t real,” she whispered.

“No,” he said gently. “They weren’t.”

She wanted to believe him. But some nights, as she lay awake in the hospital bed, she swore she could still smell lavender.

* * * * * *

A week later, she was discharged.

Her mother drove her home, the car ride quiet but not uncomfortable. Marian didn’t push her to talk. She didn’t ask if Eliza wanted to stay with her for a while, though the offer lingered in the air between them, unspoken.

Eliza wasn’t sure if she would have said yes.

Her apartment was exactly as she had left it. No shattered ceiling. No creeping vines. Just dust settling on the furniture, dishes left untouched in the sink, a life abandoned mid-step.

She moved through the space carefully, as if something might shift beneath her feet—as if some part of that other world had followed her back—but there was nothing.

There was no twilight sky beyond the window, no warm laughter curling in the air. The only thing waiting for her was silence.

She set her bag down and inhaled slowly.

Her mother hesitated in the doorway. “Are you going to be okay?”

Eliza turned, managing a small, tired smile. “I think so.”

It wasn’t a lie. Not entirely.

Marian studied her a moment longer, then nodded, reaching out to squeeze her hand before stepping back. “If you need me,” she said, “I’m only a call away.”

Eliza nodded, and then she was alone.

She stood in the middle of her apartment for a long time, listening to the quiet.

There was no vine, no house. No father, no uncle, no Sophie.

She was here—and she was alive.

She closed her eyes, grounding herself in the present.

For the first time in months, she let herself miss them.

* * * * * *

Later that night, she sat by the window, watching the city lights flicker in the distance. She reached into her pocket, fingers brushing something small, something smooth.

Her stomach twisted.

Slowly, she pulled it out.

It was a seed—black, smooth, and unmistakable.

She should have thrown it away or crushed it beneath her heel. Instead, she turned it over in her palm, staring at it in the glow of the streetlights.

In the back of her mind, a single thought curled, unbidden.

To see what you have lost, plant this.

Eliza closed her fingers around the seed.

She had to know.

Slowly but surely, she made her way to the corner of her apartment, where she found an old ceramic pot tucked away.

Methodically, she filled it with soil, and as if on autopilot, she retrieved the seed, inspected it for just a moment, and pressed it into the dirt.

A familiar scent drifted through the air the moment she finished watering it.

Lavender.

It was impossible, she told herself. And yet, there it was again.

Sophie. Precious Sophie.

She braced herself for what she knew would come next—the voices, the embraces—the love.

Deep down inside, she knew it wasn’t real, that they were impostors, and yet she craved their affection. With every fiber of her being, she craved it.

When they arrived the next day, she would answer their call.

And this time, she knew—before the first stalk sprouted, leading to the sky—that she was never coming back.

She loved her mother, too, but she needed more. More than her mother could provide, more than anyone could ever know.

Silently, she mouthed an apology to the ones she’d be leaving behind and returned her attention to the pot. It had been just a few minutes, but even now, she swore she saw the first signs of growth—of hope, a better future, an end to the heartache.

Yes, Eliza was certain. She knew it instinctively; she’d never been so sure of anything in her life.

This time, she was never coming back.

This time, for once and forever—

She was going home.

And no one would ever—ever—take that away from her again.