Maya’s POV
The memory comes uninvited, as it always does.
Lora at the kitchen table of our tiny apartment, three a.m., surrounded by bills and textbooks that formed a paper fortress around her exhaustion.
She was twenty-four then, working the breakfast shift at the diner, the afternoon shift at the dry cleaner, weekend nights bartending at a club that made her come home smelling like smoke and desperation.
Four hours of sleep if she was lucky. Sometimes less.
I was sixteen, padding out of my bedroom in bare feet because I'd heard her crying through the thin walls.
She didn't know I heard, never knew how many nights I lay awake listening to her muffle sobs into her pillow, trying so hard to be strong for me that she forgot I could be strong for her too.
"Lora?" I stood in the doorway, squinting against the single lamp she kept burning. "It's three in the morning. Why aren't you asleep?"
Her head jerked up, pen still clutched in her hand, eyes red-rimmed and startled. "Maya. Baby, what are you doing up? You have school tomorrow."
"So do you." I crossed to the table, looking at the papers scattered around her. Electric bill. Water bill. Something from the landlord that looked ominous.
And beneath it all, a college textbook—Introduction to Graphic Design—with a bookmark stuck at page forty-seven. The same page it had been on for three months.
"You're working yourself to death."
"I'm fine." She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "I just need to figure out the budget for this month. We're a little short, but I can pick up an extra shift at the club on Thursday, and if I—"
"Lora." I pulled out the chair beside her and sat down. "When's the last time you slept more than four hours?"
She hesitated too long before answering. "I sleep plenty."
"That's not an answer."
"Maya."
"When's the last time you opened that textbook? Actually opened it, not just moved it from one pile to another?"
Her face crumpled for just a moment before she rebuilt her walls. "I've been busy. I'll get back to it when things settle down. When you're…"
"When I'm what? Graduated? Grown up? Moved out?" I reached across the table and took her hand. "You've been saying 'when things settle down' for two years. Things aren't going to settle down, Lora. Not if you keep sacrificing everything for me."
"It's not a sacrifice." Her voice was fierce, sudden. "Don't ever call it that. You are not a sacrifice, Maya. You are the reason I get up in the morning. You are the reason any of this matters."
"But what about what you want? What about your degree? What about that design firm you used to talk about, the one with the—"
"It can wait." She squeezed my hand. "Right now, my job is to make sure you have a future."
"What if I don't want everything else to wait?" Tears burned in my eyes. "What if I want my sister to have a future too, to be happy?"
Lora stood up, came around the table, and pulled me into her arms.
I buried my face in her shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent of her—coffee and cheap perfume and something that was just her, the smell of home and safety and unconditional love.
"I am happy," she whispered into my hair. "I have you. That's all I need."
"Lora…"
"Shh. Listen to me."
She stroked my back like she used to when I was small, when nightmares would send me crawling into her bed.
"One day, you're going to graduate. You're going to get an amazing job. You're going to have this incredible life full of everything you've ever dreamed of. And when that happens, I'm going to be so proud. I'm going to be the proudest big sister in the entire world."
"And then what?" I pulled back to look at her. "What happens to you?"
She smiled—a real smile this time, tired but genuine. "Then I get to watch you shine."
Lora never finished her own degree.
Never traveled like she'd dreamed—Paris, Rome, Tokyo, all the places she'd circled in magazines when she was young and the future still felt infinite.
Never dated anyone seriously because there wasn't time, wasn't energy, wasn't room for anything beyond keeping us both afloat.
She poured every ounce of herself into my future and called it a privilege. The phone call came on a Tuesday.
I was twenty-one, fresh out of college with a diploma Lora had sobbed over for ten minutes straight. I'd just landed my first real job—entry level, nothing glamorous, but enough that I could finally start paying her back.
I had plans. I was going to take over the bills, to force her to go back to school, to give her every single thing she'd sacrificed for me.
My phone rang while I was making dinner. Lora's name should have appeared on the screen—she always called around six to check in. Instead, the number was unfamiliar.
"Hello?"
"Is this Maya Morrison?" A man's voice—official, careful in a way that made my stomach drop.
"Yes. Who is this?"
"Miss Morrison, my name is Detective Rivera. I'm calling from the county sheriff's office." A pause, a breath. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this. There's been an incident involving your sister, Lora Morrison."
The apartment tilted. "What kind of incident? Is she okay? What hospital is she at? I can be there in—"
"Miss Morrison." His voice was gentle in a way that made me want to scream. "I'm so sorry. Your sister was pronounced dead at the scene."
The funeral was small, the casket was closed.
I stood alone at the grave because Lora had sacrificed every friendship, every connection, every piece of herself—and there was no one left who remembered the woman she'd been before she became my whole world.
No college roommates she'd kept in touch with. No coworkers who'd known her longer than a few months. No boyfriend, no best friend, no one.
Just me.
Rain soaked through my coat as I knelt in the cemetery mud. My fingers pressed into the fresh earth, feeling the cold seep into my bones.
"You promised," I whispered to the headstone. "You promised you'd never leave me alone. You promised."
The granite didn't answer, and the rain kept falling. And somewhere deep inside my chest, something that had been breaking for days finally shattered completely.
The promise tore from my throat like a wound opening.
"I'll make him pay." My voice was raw, barely human. "I'll take everything from him. He'll know what it means to lose someone who matters. I swear to you, Lora, I swear on everything we were. He will suffer like I'm suffering. He will lose like I've lost."
I knelt there until my legs went numb. Until the rain stopped and started again. Until the groundskeeper came to tell me the cemetery was closing and I had to leave.
I left, but I never stopped planning.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand, pulling me out of the past. An email notification from the Hale household.
‘Dear Ms. Morrison, Thank you for your application. We would like to schedule an interview at your earliest convenience…’
They want to schedule an interview. My fingers tremble as I type my response.
‘I'm coming, Lora. I'm finally coming.’