Serena's POV
Grief doesn't fade with time—it just learns to hide in smaller spaces, waiting for a single word to set it free.
I sit alone in the kitchen, coffee cooling between my hands, staring at the steam curling up from the mug without really seeing it.
Sleep came in fragments last night, each stretch of darkness interrupted by the same loop playing behind my closed eyes.
Caleb's voice cutting through me. Rachel's face lingering where it doesn't belong. The slam of doors echoing through empty silence.
There is no us.
I take a sip of coffee and find it's gone lukewarm, bitter on my tongue.
"Good morning, sweetheart."
Catherine's voice floats in from the doorway, warm and bright despite the early hour. She's dressed already, blonde hair swept back from her face, a steaming mug clutched in her own hands.
She slides into the chair across from me with the ease of someone who belongs in this kitchen, in this house, in this life.
"Morning." I manage a smile that probably looks as hollow as it feels.
"Couldn't sleep?" She tilts her head, studying me with the gentle concern of a mother who's learned to read between the lines. "You look exhausted, honey. Is everything alright?"
"Just a lot on my mind."
"Of course there is."
She reaches across the table and covers my hand with hers, the touch meant to comfort.
"You've got so much happening right now. The engagement, school, figuring out your future—it's a lot for anyone to carry."
If only you knew.
"I've been thinking..."
Catherine's eyes light up with enthusiasm she can barely contain.
"About the wedding. I know it's early, and I don't want to pressure you, but I'd love to help when you're ready. Looking at venues, choosing colors, all of it. Your father and I want this to be everything you've dreamed of."
"Catherine…"
"Lucas seems so committed."
She barrels forward, oblivious to the tension creeping into my shoulders.
"The way he proposed, making sure your father approved first, being so patient about the timeline—he really is a wonderful young man. You're lucky to have found someone who respects tradition like that."
Respects tradition. Is that what we're calling it?
"I know your mother would have loved to see this day."
Catherine's voice softens, and something in my chest seizes.
"Elizabeth always wanted you to find someone who would take care of you. She told me once, not long before she got sick, that her biggest fear was leaving you before she could see you happy."
I can't breathe.
"I just want you to be happy, bunny."
The word cracks something open inside me. Bunny.
The memory floods in without warning—vivid, golden, devastating in its clarity.
My mother in the kitchen of our old house, flour dusting her cheek, teaching me how to measure ingredients while humming off-key to some song playing softly on the radio.
The afternoon light streaming through the window, catching the dust motes dancing in the air. The smell of vanilla and butter wrapping around us like a blanket.
"The people who love you, really love you, will never make you feel small. Remember that, bunny."
Her hands guiding mine over the mixing bowl. Her laughter when I added too much sugar. The way she pressed a kiss to my forehead and told me mistakes were just opportunities to start again.
She was forty-two when the cancer took her. I was fourteen, still young enough to need my mother and old enough to understand I'd never have her again.
Six months.
That's all the time my father waited after Mom died before announcing he was marrying Catherine. Her best friend.
The woman who'd stood beside her hospital bed holding her hand, who'd promised to look after us, who'd been hovering in the doorway of our lives long before she was invited to step inside.
Six months to grieve. To move on. To replace the woman who built our home with someone who'd been waiting in the wings all along.
"Serena?" Catherine's voice pulls me back to the present, her brow creased with concern. "Are you alright? You've gone pale."
"I'm fine." The lie comes automatically, smoothed by years of practice. "Just remembered I have an assignment due. I should probably go work on it."
"Of course." She squeezes my hand one more time before releasing it. "Don't work too hard. And think about what I said, about the wedding planning. It would mean so much to me to be part of it."
"I will."
I excuse myself with a steady voice and a fixed smile, retreating up the stairs before the mask can slip.
Each step feels heavier than the last, the weight of everything I've never said pressing down on my shoulders until I can barely stand upright.
My bedroom door closes behind me with a soft click, and I finally let myself crumble.
The locket is in my nightstand drawer, where it always is. I pull it out with trembling fingers and hold it in my palm, tracing the engraved initials with my thumb.
E.L. Elizabeth Lakin. Inside, a tiny photograph smiles back at me—my mother frozen in time, forever young, forever gone.
What would you think of all this, Mom?
I sink onto the edge of my bed, the locket clutched against my chest like a talisman against the chaos consuming my life.
Would you be disappointed? Would you understand? Would you have seen through Lucas the way you always saw through people who wore their kindness like costumes?
The resentment sitting heavy in my chest isn't about Catherine being bad. I know that. She's only ever been kind to me, welcoming, eager to love a grieving girl who desperately needed a mother figure.
She stepped into a role that was never meant to be hers and filled it with grace I couldn't appreciate.
That's what makes it worse.
It's not about Catherine. It's about my mother being replaced—seamlessly, efficiently, like swapping out a broken part in a machine that kept running without pause.
It's about no one ever asking if I was ready. No one checking whether fourteen-year-old Serena had processed her grief before handing her a new family and expecting gratitude.
I open the locket and stare at my mother's face, searching for answers she can't give.
You told me people who love me wouldn't make me feel small. But what about the people who make me feel invisible? What about the ones who erase you a little more every day without even realizing they're doing it?
The tears come quietly, sliding down my cheeks in hot tracks I don't bother to wipe away.
Somewhere in this house, Caleb is nursing his own wounds from our fight. Somewhere out there, Lucas is planning his next move.
And somewhere deep inside me, a fourteen-year-old girl is still waiting for someone to ask if she's okay.
No one ever has.
Maybe that's why I keep making choices that hurt me—because I never learned I was allowed to choose something else.