Page 107 - NS 2024

mom that I was going to get the scribbles tattooed on. My mom just shook her head and laughed. My favorite was one where we were all holding out foam swords, like the ones that my mom had le on the island for us. I remembered our adventure that day. We were traveling underwater to save a mermaid princess. We didn’t get to save her because our dinner was ready before we defeated the sea monsters.
It took me a few minutes to look up from the photo album and look at the center of the room. ere was a large desk, with three separate stacks of books. On top of each of them was a letter. is one was much longer than the one we’d received from our dad at the funeral. I moved towards the desk like it was a magnet. Owen threw the photo album on the ground and joined me. Sienna, a bit hesitantly, joined me too. We all picked up our letters. is time, I didn’t care if ours
said the same thing. I was just desperate to know what my mom had brought us here for.
Everly,
If you’re reading this letter, that means you did it. You have achieved victory on your hard-fought journey. Hopefully, you arrived here with Owen and Sienna.
The three of you have always been the absolute lights in my life. When I was cooking dinner, I would look out the window at the three of you playing. My favorite part of the day was always when you came inside and excitedly told me about the adventures the three of you had imagined out there in the backyard. When I told my friends about your stories, they deemed them childhood nonsense, but I could always see that there was much more importance to them.
I hoped to keep you three together. I took you on adventures, out of the backyard, whenever I could. I tried to make friends with Sienna’s parents. I would bake them cookies, invite them over to game nights, and offer to go out to dinner with them. The most I ever got in return was a yearly Christmas card. I knew that Sienna wasn’t living in a good environment, and I always wished that she could just be one of my own children, but I knew I couldn’t do that. It pained me to watch her stay in that house where her parents paid her no mind. I knew that our house was her escape. When their family moved away, I felt great grief that I’d let her slip away from you two and remorse that I couldn’t protect her.
I thought it would be easier to keep you and Owen together. You were living in the same house, after all, with the same parents and the same conditions. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when you guys stopped playing together, but it broke my heart just like I’m sure it broke yours. There seemed to be nothing to connect the two of you. I tried, I really did, but everything seemed forced. Occasionally, I would hear the two of you talking in the kitchen over a midnight snack, and I would smile, hoping I would wake up in the morning to find the two of you in the backyard, running barefoot in the grass, fighting over who had better magic powers. That never happened. Our