(Aurora's POV)
I lay in the dark and let the memories come, because there was no stopping them now.
Leo was fifteen when the diagnosis came back. Leukemia. I was in my final year at university, sitting in a hospital waiting room with a cup of vending machine coffee going cold in my hands, trying to hold myself together.
Martha's first words when the doctor left the room weren't directed at me. They were about me.
"You'll need to take a year off," she said. "Get a real job. Something full-time. We can't cover his treatment otherwise."
I started crying. Leo, pale and exhausted from the blood draw, reached over from his hospital bed and grabbed my hand and said, *Please, Mum. Let her finish her degree. Please.*
She made us beg for twenty minutes before she agreed.
After I finished my d
