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The crayon drawings were still stuck to the fridge.

Remembering the smell of her shampoo, I thought I smelled it faintly upstairs, where I couldn’t bring myself to go. Not yet.

Maybe not ever.

It's been a week, and I've spent hours packing things into boxes. Not everything — just the pieces I couldn’t leave behind, the ones that mattered too much to surrender to time and dust.

Her favorite stuffed bear.

His old watch.

Our wedding album.

The sun was starting to sink low when I heard the crunch of tires on gravel.

I stiffened, panic shooting through me — until I glanced out the window and saw them.

My parents.

Their faces were tight with confusion, grief, and something worse — hope.

Hope that maybe I was finally coming home.

I stepped outside, hugging myself against the wind.

For a long moment, none of us spoke.

Then my mother broke, rushing to me with tears pouring down her cheeks.

I let her wrap me in her arms, let her sob against my shoulder, even as guilt sliced me raw.

My father hung back, eyes glassy.

“I’m sorry,” I choked out again. “I’m so sorry I stayed away. I thought I was protecting you.”

Their confusion deepened.

I looked at them — really looked — and knew they deserved to hear it all.

The truth.

The danger.

The reason why I had to disappear after my family was stolen from me.

The reason I could never stay.

“I wasn’t just grieving,” I said, voice trembling.

“I was being hunted.”

Shock rippled across their faces.

My mother pulled back just enough to search my eyes, her fingers trembling against my arms.

“Hunted?” she whispered. “Jude, what are you talking about?”

I swallowed hard, forcing down the wave of nausea that always came when I thought about it — aboutthem— the monsters who tore my world apart.