When she passed, she left me a small inheritance — not enough to make me rich, but enough to give me something I’d never had before: room to breathe.
Her money paid off my car, cleared my credit cards, and gave me the chance to start again. My parents weren’t happy. They wanted part of it for my brother’s struggling business, and another share to help with their mortgage.
I replied, “Maybe I finally got honest.”
She never answered. The silence hurt, but it also healed.
A Small Job, A Bigger Dream
I left my marketing job and started working part-time at a small bookstore downtown. It didn’t pay much, but for the first time in years, I could breathe. Surrounded by paper and quiet, I felt whole.
At night, I wrote. I had always written — poems, short stories, half-finished novels — but Grandma had been the only one who believed it mattered.
“You’ve got a voice, honey,” she’d tell me. “Don’t let the world silence it.”
So, I started posting my writing online under a pen name. I expected nothing. But slowly, comments began to appear — strangers thanking me for putting into words what they’d never been able to say.
And that’s when Liana walked into my life.
The Second Person Who Believed in Me
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