Chapter 128

OLIVIA I knew my grandmother was only trying to calm me. That was why she kept saying it didn’t hurt, why she smiled so gently even as her face had gone pale. But I knew better. I could hear it in the way her breathing faltered, in the way her hand trembled when she reached for mine. She had always been like that—enduring everything in silence, carrying pain as if it were something she was meant to bear alone. She never wanted to burden me, or my uncle, even when she was the one suffering the most. Even now, lying on a hospital bed, she was still thinking of everyone else before herself. But I cared. I cared more than she would ever admit—more than she ever thought she deserved. I wanted to be her strength now, just as she had been mine all throughout my life. Earlier, the doctor had told me that it was a neighbor who brought my grandmother to the hospital. When they found her, she had already been slumped on the ground, unable to get up. No one knew how long she had been lying there,