His father's hand landed gently on his shoulder—just enough pressure to cut through the numb static in his limbs. It was a signal, quiet but insistent, and Alex moved without thinking, letting himself be lifted to his feet like driftwood pulled from the tide. His legs resisted at first, awkward and stiff with disuse, but they obeyed.
He walked down the center aisle with his parents, every step a hollow echo through the hushed church. The stained glass flickered in his peripheral vision, a cruel kaleidoscope of false beauty. His gaze locked on the sunlight spilling through the doors ahead. It seemed impossibly bright—too bright, like walking into the glare of a stage light when you haven't memorized your lines.
He just wanted to disappear.
Back to his room.
Back to silence.
Back to a place where Leo's absence didn't hum in the walls.
Outside, the day was offensively alive.
The sun bore down without apology, casting harsh shadows across the grass. Cars rolled by on the distant street. The wind stirred the leaves overhead, whispering indifferently. Around him, clusters of mourners lingered, whispering in low tones, their words punctuated by the gentle thud of car doors and the occasional bark of laughter that died quickly, ashamed of its own existence.
Alex shrank into himself. He didn't belong here. Not among the people who had loved Leo without failing him. He stood on the church steps, still dressed in his borrowed black, feeling exposed—like grief had turned him inside out, his skin too thin to hold back the weight of his guilt.
Then he saw her.
Maria.
Leo's mother stood near an oak tree, supported on either side by family members. Her dress hung loosely off her slight frame, as if even her clothes no longer knew how to fit her. Her once-bright eyes had dulled to stormy glass, hollowed out by days without sleep and a lifetime packed into one week of mourning.
Alex's first instinct was to vanish. To back into the shadows and slip away unseen. He couldn't face her—not the woman who had welcomed him into her home a hundred times, who'd called him "honorary son," who had smiled at his terrible jokes and praised his music and poured juice into mismatched cups after school.
But it was too late.
She looked up.
Saw him.
Something shifted in her face—not a smile, not forgiveness, but something softer than he deserved. Recognition, perhaps. She whispered something to the people beside her and stepped forward, fragile and deliberate, as though every bone in her body might shatter if she moved too quickly.
The world narrowed. Conversations muted. Traffic faded. The heat on his skin disappeared. All he could see was Maria—this woman drowning in a grief too large for her to carry—walking toward him across the sunlit grass.
She stopped in front of him, close enough that he could see the faint tremble in her fingers. Her eyes, rimmed red, met his.
No anger.
No blame.
Only pain. An endless, aching ocean of it.
She reached into her small black purse with shaking hands and pulled out an envelope. White. Clean. Carefully sealed.
His name was written across the front.
Alex.
He didn't need to look twice to recognize the handwriting. Leo's. The loops were lazy, the 'x' too large—as it always had been, from scrawled homework notes to birthday cards to doodled lyrics they used to pass back and forth. The sight of it now, in this new context, nearly took him to his knees.
Maria's voice, when it came, was raw. Strained and cracked, but steady.
"He wanted you to have this," she said.
She stared past him now, at nothing in particular. Her voice was soft and flat, but laced with something unbreakable beneath the grief. "He wrote it a few days ago. He didn't… he didn't tell me what it said. Just that it was for you. That it mattered."
She looked at him again. "He was always so proud of you, Alex. You should know that. The music. The radio show. He talked about you all the time. You were—" Her voice caught.
"…you were his hero."
The word gutted him.
Hero.
The kind of word that belonged to someone brave. Someone who showed up. Someone who noticed. But Alex hadn't been any of those things. He hadn't called back. He hadn't asked again. He'd left Leo alone in the dark, and now he would carry the consequences like chains around his ankles.
He reached for the envelope with trembling fingers.
It was impossibly heavy.
The paper felt warm from her hand, but it may as well have been forged in iron. The corners bit into his skin, as if to remind him that this was real—this last message from someone now beyond reach. He couldn't breathe. The weight of it sank into his palm, into his wrist, into his chest.
"I'm…" His throat burned. "I'm so sorry."
The words barely made it out. They were small and broken, pitiful offerings at the altar of something far too big to name.
Maria didn't reply. She just gave a slight, heartbreaking nod, then let her relatives lead her away, back into the blur of mourners and sunlight and fading conversation.
Alex remained frozen.
His mother was beside him again, her hand hovering at his arm, unsure whether to guide or hold. His father stood silently on his other side, a quiet wall of presence. But Alex couldn't move.
He couldn't move.
He stared at the name on the envelope, his name, written in the ink of a boy who was no longer alive. The church service had ended. The people were leaving. The speeches and hymns were done. But none of that mattered.
Because the real funeral—the real reckoning—was folded into that envelope.
And it hadn't even begun.
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i am not getting motivation to write anymore. what can i do :-/