Paige stood at the kitchen counter, holding her mother’s favorite mug. She had not cried. Not once. She had told everyone she was fine. But inside, a glacier was forming. She believed that if she started crying, she would become a sea, and seas have no edges, and a girl without edges cannot return to shore.

Paige, heart hammering, descended. At the bottom was a single room with a single shelf. On it sat one book, leather-bound and larger than a dictionary. The title was embossed in silver leaf: The Untold Stories of Paige Turner Nau.

Paige gasped. It was the story of her life, but only the parts she’d never told anyone. The secret hopes. The quiet shames. The roads not taken.

She found a chapter titled The Summer of Your Mother’s Death and turned to it. The ink there was wet, shimmering. She read:

The key was brass, old, and smelled of basement. She found it in a hollowed-out copy of The Secret Garden on her mother’s nightstand. Tied to it was a scrap of paper in Eleanor’s looping hand: For Paige Turner Nau. The last story.

By dawn, the book was finished. The last page read: Paige Turner Nau went upstairs. She called her father and said, “I need to tell you about Mom. And also about a book I wrote once.” She did not delete this sentence.