Ever since Mason died, our house had been living in silence.
Not the kind of silence that feels peaceful.
But the kind that presses against your chest when you wake up in the morning and realize something important is missing.
Hazel used to dance in the kitchen while I made pancakes.
Now she barely left her room.
She was seventeen, but grief had made her smaller in ways no measurement could capture.
Mason used to call her Hazelnut.
He would steal syrup from her plate and laugh, promising that if no boy ever asked her to prom, he would wear a tuxedo himself and take her.
He never got the chance.
A truck. A wet road. A Tuesday that changed everything.
After the funeral, Hazel stopped eating.
Then she started eating too much.
Then she stopped going outside.
And slowly, she stopped being reachable at all.
The only person who still reached her was Eli.
The quiet boy from two houses down.
He never knocked loudly. Never asked too many questions. He simply existed beside her in the quiet way she needed.
Sometimes I would see them sitting on the porch in silence, Hazel leaning against the railing while Eli sketched in a notebook.
One afternoon, he looked up at me.
“Mrs. Mave,” he said softly.
He always called me that. Never too familiar, never too distant.
“She ate half a sandwich today.”
“Thank you, Eli.”
“For what?”
“For sitting with her.”
He just shrugged, as if it cost him nothing.
But I knew it did.
