They watched the fire burn down to ash. Neither one of them went inside.
That was the Trunk family curse—not poverty, not bad luck, but the fierce, suffocating preservation of potential. Her mother’s trunk held the wedding dress for a groom who’d fled. The acceptance letter to a art school she couldn’t afford. A plane ticket to Paris, long expired. Every dream she’d packed away to keep it safe from failure. olivia trunk
Olivia took the key. She didn’t open the trunk. Not for three days. She sat beside her mother, feeding her ice chips, watching the rise and fall of her chest. On the third night, her mother squeezed her hand and whispered, “It’s heavier than you think.” They watched the fire burn down to ash