Three days passed.
Angela kept her head down, slipping in and out of the house like a ghost. Her mother didn't yell. She didn't speak much at all.
The silence between them was louder than any argument.
At school, things were different. Students nodded at Angela in the hallway. Some smiled. One girl even asked if she'd be writing more.
Angela didn't know how to respond to any of it.
But Gabriel remained her anchor — steady, quiet, there. Sometimes they didn't talk about anything at all. They just were. And that, somehow, was enough.
Friday night, Angela came home to find dinner on the table. Two plates. Rice and stew. The food was still warm.
She stood at the doorway, confused.
Her mother sat across the table, not looking up from her bowl.
Angela approached cautiously. "Did you… cook?"
"I was already in the kitchen," her mother said. "No point making just one plate."
Angela sat. Quietly. Slowly. She ate.
They didn't speak, but they didn't fight either.
Afterward, Angela stood to clear her plate. Her mother surprised her again.
"You were brave."
Angela froze.
"What?"
Her mother didn't repeat it. She just stared into her empty bowl, twisting her fingers slightly. "I didn't like hearing it. The poem. But… you were brave."
Angela sat back down. Her voice was barely a whisper. "You heard it?"
"One of the teachers sent a video link. I watched it."
Angela swallowed hard. "And?"
Her mother rubbed her eyes, as if the words pained her. "And… I realized maybe I haven't made it easy for you. To speak. To be."
Angela looked down at her hands.
"I wasn't trying to make you the villain," she said.
"I know."
They sat in that fragile, unspoken space for a long time.
Then her mother said something Angela never expected to hear.
"I used to write," she murmured. "Before life got… loud. Messy. I forgot."
Angela blinked. "What did you write?"
"Poems. Mostly angry ones." Her mother gave a tired smile. "But they made sense of the noise."
Angela hesitated. Then, carefully, she pushed her notebook across the table. "You can read mine. If you want."
Her mother looked at it like it was something sacred. Or breakable.
She didn't open it — not yet. But she took it in both hands.
"I'd like that," she said.
That night, Angela lay in bed with tears drying on her cheeks — not from pain this time, but from something quieter. Something almost like relief.
The house was still far from healed.
But maybe — just maybe — it was starting.