You don't even care

Aiden

For the past few days, the house felt quieter than usual. The kind of quiet that made my skin crawl and my chest tighten. Grandma and Aunt Kate or should I say my stepmother were gone, off to Italy for some event I didn’t care about. At first, I thought their absence might be a relief, but it wasn’t. It made everything worse.

The silence wasn’t peaceful; it was oppressive. There was no one around to cook a fresh meal, no comforting smells coming from the kitchen. Instead, I had to heat up leftovers from the fridge and eat alone at the table. I tried...