Chapter 3 - The Ghost of the Past Returns
The email arrived on a rainy Tuesday morning in November, slipping quietly into my professional inbox beneath a pile of pitch acceptances and reader mail. It wasn't from Jake. It was from an address I hadn’t seen in half a decade, bearing a subject line designed to bypass every single defense mechanism I had spent years constructing: Mother is sick. You need to come home.
It was signed by my father, his name typed in stiff, formal lettering that felt like a summons from a court I no longer recognized.
I stared at the screen for a long time, the glow of the monitor casting harsh shadows across my face. My first instinct was to hit delete, to drag the message straight into the trash and empty the bin. Five years of absolute silence had taught me how to breathe without their permission. I had a life now—a small, clean, orderly life where nobody stole my scrunchies, where nobody gaslit me into apologizing for my own grief, and where my achievements weren't automatically redirected to light up my sister’s orbit.
Yet, the word sick sat there like a ticking clock.
I didn't care about my mother—not really. The woman hadn't looked me in the eyes with genuine warmth since I was old enough to form independent thoughts. But the sheer weight of obligation, drilled into me like bone marrow since childhood, pulled at my conscience. What if it was a trick? What if it was real?
Before I could talk myself out of it, my phone rang. The caller ID displayed an unknown local number, but the area code was my hometown’s.
Against my better judgment, I swiped to answer.
“Hello?” I said, my voice flat and guarded.
“She’s asking for you,” a voice said. It wasn’t my father. It was a man’s voice, deeper than I remembered, rougher around the edges, stripped of the easy, golden-boy charm it used to carry.
Jake.
The air left my lungs in a sharp rush. “How did you get this number?”
“It wasn't hard,” he said quietly, the line crackling with static. “Your publisher has a public contact form. Look... I know you hate me. I know you have every right to never speak to me again. But your mom’s heart is failing, and your dad is falling apart. Your sister... well, your sister is dealing with her own things right now, but your parents won't stop talking about you in their sleep. Can’t you just come back for a weekend? Just see her before it’s too late.”
“My sister’s things?” I echoed, latching onto the odd phrasing despite myself. “What does that even mean?”
May you like
There was a long, heavy pause on the other end of the line. When Jake spoke again, his voice dropped an octave, carrying a strange, convoluted weight that I couldn't quite decipher.
“You haven’t heard, have you?” he asked, a bitter edge slipping into his tone. “Of course you haven't. You blocked the world. She married me, yeah... but things haven't exactly turned out the way the fairy tale promised.”
