I usually don’t have my phone on, but it seems like everyone has to be connected to everyone somehow. I hear it beep and I ignore it, knowing it’s Selena but not wanting to check.

A voice in the back of my head tells me it could be Axel. But I doubt it. It’s not like he cares enough to message me.

He’s already over me anyway.

My mind flashes back to the image of him in the ring with those girls, and I can’t believe I truly thought he would only ever love me.

I’m such an idiot.

We’re in the car, driving far, far away. I told Selena I was planning to get away from all this. She doesn’t even know where I’m going, and I struggle with everything in me not to tell her where I am. She’s my best friend, and I will miss her terribly.

But she’s the one who led Axel back to me, leaving him clues and everything so he would know where to find me before. I can’t take the risk she’ll do that again.

I feel sick.

I stop at a red light and look over my shoulder into the backseat. Lark’s asleep in her car seat. Her head starts to lull to the side as she rests. The ride is slow. I’m not a dangerous driver like Axel—never have been.

I glance over at the street signs trying to figure out where I am now. I’ve never driven this far before. I didn’t realize I’d be so tired after driving through a few states.

But emotionally I’m exhausted, and I can feel the fatigue settling into my bones. With a sigh, I wait for the light to turn green.

Raindrops ping against the window like pixies knocking at the glass. They feel as sad as I am. The sky opens up and it feels like the clouds are crying. The world is darker than usual, and I want to run away from it all.

I wipe away some of the fog forming on the windshield to clear it, and I see a playground across the street. A small family is playing there. They quickly gather their stuff and run to get out of the rain. A mother, a father, and a girl a little older than Lark.

I force my eyes away from them and back to the main road.

Pressing the accelerator I vow to keep going.

It’s been a little over three years since I was last here in this town, but everything seems so much older. I turn into the driveway of my old house, knowing that no one will look for me here.

Most importantly, Axel won’t look here. It’s best for me to be alone right now. I don’t talk about the past often, so it makes sense that people might assume I’ve moved on from it.

But I haven’t moved on from the past at all. My entire life is consumed by it.

It took a few days to get here, interrupted by stops and sleeping at rest stops. But for all the rest we’ve gotten—and by we, I mean Lark. I could hardly sleep a wink, my mind was racing the whole time, but Lark is still sleeping when we arrive.

I unfold my stiff limbs from the car, careful not to wake her. Then I open the trunk and take out our bags. We only started with one suitcase but some hurried packing at the apartment left us with a lot more.

I can’t carry them all, so I set them down on the pavement beside my feet, hoping that the rain doesn’t ruin the bottoms too much. I try to find the driest space I can, but there’s no way I can fit all those bags in my hands and close the trunk door at the same time.

Closing the trunk, I beep my keys so that the car is locked again. Lark stays asleep. She can stay in there for a second while I take some of the bags in, and then I’ll take her in next.

I walk inside and throw the bags on the floor, to the side of the entrance. I don’t look at anything else. There’s still furniture here, though, and I remember with a pang that my father paid off our debts before his death. This house belongs to us.

Desperate to escape that nagging feeling of dread that feels like it’s following me around, I run back outside to get Lark. After I unbuckle her from her car seat, I carry her into the house. She mumbles something in sleepy annoyance, but then goes right back to sleep.

That night I’m too depressed to cook. I put the food stuffs I bought away and rummage through for old take away menus we used to keep in the junk drawer. Flipping through the old, ragged papers, I finally find a Chinese takeout place I love.

And they deliver. At least, they did, when I loved them as a teenager.

I take my phone out and slide past the texts and calls there, closing my eyes so I don’t have to look at who they’re from. Then I call the restaurant, praying they’re still in business.

They are. I crumple to the floor of the kitchen, turning the lights off on my way down as I wait for the delivery boy to get here, counting every minute that passes.

Finally, after thirty minutes, I hear a ring of the doorbell. My bones cracking as I get up, and suddenly I feel one hundred years old.

I open the door and take the food from the delivery boy and give him a tip. He’s a teenager, and he doesn’t look happy either. I can relate so I give him a little more than I usually would.

Then I shut the door and call Lark down, and we dig in.

We’re moving in, trying to make the place happier. Just because I’m not cheery doesn’t mean Lark shouldn’t be, and this dusty relic is no place to raise a child—not a happy one like Lark.

“We could paint your room,” I say to Lark as she sits on the floor, trying to lift up a chair so she can dust underneath it. She’s having trouble with that, so she just takes the rag and gets to work on the chair’s legs.

She just shakes her head. She doesn’t look happy. She hasn’t in a while, but I haven’t asked her why. Part of me is afraid to.

She was delighted when I gave her my old room a few weeks ago. But the excitement has settled in, just like we have. And now no one is happy.

“Lark.” I squat down so we’re at the same height. “What’s the matter?”

She crosses her arms over her chest, ever the strong one. “Nothing.”

“Lark …” I draw her name out, waiting for her to give in and tell me, so I can comfort her, my eyes plead with hers, but she drops her gaze to the ground and breaks out in tears.

This isn’t what I was expecting, and I crawl over to her and give her a hug.

I keep asking her to tell me what’s the matter, but nothing works. When she finally speaks it’s so soft I can’t make out a word.

Minutes pass before she tries again, and I wonder if I’m doing the wrong thing teaching her how to deal with her emotions, if my heartbreak is going to bleed into her childhood and mess her up for good.

“I miss Axel,” she finally says, burying her head in my chest.

I hold her while she cries, and I feel a sob building in my chest, too. But I can’t cry. I have something that might finally make her feel better. I’ve been waiting to show her these. The first one is dated for her fourth birthday, a few months from now.

“I have something to show you,” I tell her, and then we go to the closet by the door together.

I used to keep rain boots and coats here. I will when we get into fall and winter and Lark needs those, but for now they’re still packed away. She’s getting older, growing, and she may need new ones by then. But the surprise I have for her now isn’t shoes.

It takes a while for me to find the remote to the TV, and I’m glad Dad finally decided to get a new one in my room before he passed away—or else we wouldn’t be able to watch this. I silently thank Axel’s parents for helping us out near the end, because indirectly they’re why he was able to do that, and why we’re able to watch this.

Axel left the box full of stuff under our bed in the villa, and I made sure to bring it with us.

I set the big box on the mattress next to Lark and pushed it toward her.

“Open it,” I tell her, and she looks at me in confusion before breaking out into a big smile—the kind I haven’t seen in a while.

She opens the top and stares in confusion at the envelopes and SD cards. She doesn’t know what an SD card is, so she pulls one out and starts chewing on it.

“No.” I snatch it back from her.

She gasps at me back dramatically, and asks what it is, and I explain.

I go to the TV and look for the little line to stick the card into, and then I pass the remote to Lark. I explain the buttons to her. This one is more old-fashioned than the ones she’s used to. As the menu pops up, showing all the files on there. They’re labeled, neatly.

“Introduction.”

“Stuff about me.”

“For Olive.”

When I see the one for me, my heart squeezes tight in my chest, but I bite back my emotions as best I can.

It goes on and on and Lark scrolls down through all of them, and I see that there’s a few hundred in there, at least. I wonder how he found the time to do this over the course of a few days. Lark looks at me and is about to click on one labeled “Your first Christmas.”

I shake my head at her and make her go back to the one called “introduction.”

It starts, and Axel’s beautiful face fills the screen.

He begins telling stories to Lark, and to me.

He’s looking right at us, and in that moment it’s almost like he never hurt me.

But his eyes are full of tears and his voice is breaking as he tries to compose himself. I try to, too, but I can’t. So I just sit by Lark and wrap my arms around her, holding her close as I cry silently.

The first video is only six minutes long. And then we click to the next one, and the next one, his voice rolling over us long into the night.