I shoved him away, pointing at my mom’s grave. I couldn’t stop the tears in my eyes, but I managed to firmly say, “Erving. You’ve tainted my mom’s funeral and destroyed everything we ever had! From today on, it’s over between us!”
With that, I turned and walked away.
From the day of my mom’s funeral, I had moved into a hotel—anything to keep Erving completely out of my life.
I blocked every way he could reach me, thinking that would finally sever the ties between us. But no matter how many times I cut him off, he always found new numbers to text me from. And every message carried the same pleading words.
[Mandy, I know I messed up. Please come back. I’ll make it up to you, I promise. Just forgive me this once, okay?]
I didn’t even have the energy to open them. I would just glance at the preview, then turn off my phone.
Those delayed apologies had long since lost their meaning—buried along with my mom under the cold gravestone, scattered across countless sleepless nights when I tossed and turned, wondering how everything had gone so wrong.
A few days later, it was finally time for me to leave.