LERA
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They didn't speak on the rest of the drive back.
Not from anger — Lera understood that much even in the moment, watching her husband's hands tight on the wheel, his eyes fixed somewhere past the road. This wasn't a fight. This was grief arriving sideways, uninvited, years late, and neither of them had the language ready for it.
She put Elias to bed alone that night. Caius sat in the kitchen with the letter, reading it again, and again, and Lera watched from the doorway and didn't know how to reach whatever he'd fallen into.
"Talk to me." Finally, she sat across from him.
"I don't know what to say." He looked at the letter. "I keep thinking — if I'd known. If she'd told me at the time instead of carrying it alone for years. I would have wanted to know. I would have grieved w
