The Rest of the Story

by Sarah Dessen

There were lots of ways to love someone, I guessed, both by remembering and forgetting.

Maybe because you never think, leaning into a snapshot in a stranger’s kitchen, that you’ll see the person who probably knew you better than anyone. Like she’d been waiting there for me all this time, and now here I was.

Part of grieving is letting go of the past. But how can you let go if you never knew it in the first place?”

But sometimes even the shortest distance can be impossible to navigate, whether you went road or shore or some other route. In all her recovery attempts, my mom had never lived far from us. But sometimes, when someone’s not right there, they might as well be a million miles away.