Juno sat on the cool tile floor of the upstairs bathroom, knees hugged tightly to her chest, her arms wrapped around them.

  Her head rested against the pale blue wall, eyes unfocused, red-rimmed, and burning. Silent sobs wracked her shoulders.

  Her chest ached and her throat was raw, but not a single sound escaped her lips. She couldn’t make a sound. If she did, she was afraid the whole house would hear her unraveling.

  Aaron’s words had stayed with her, haunting the quiet corners of her mind. He missed his sister. Not the version she was now. The real Celia.

  The one who made jokes and teased him and brought him cocoa without being asked. The one who knew every inside joke, every unspoken rule of their strange little sibling dynamic.

  The one she’s just pretending, and failing, to be. By some messed up, unexplainable twist of fate.

  Juno had no idea how long she had been crying in the bathroom. Ten minutes? Twenty? Time was frozen here as the silence enveloped her, and only now did the shaking begin to subside.

  And then she heard it.

  The front door opened with a gust of wind and clattering keys. Footsteps. Voices.

  “Oh, it’s freezing out there.”

  “Should’ve worn a heavier coat, huh?”

  Anna and Mark. Home early.

  Juno’s breath caught in her throat. She scrambled to her feet and turned to the mirror above the sink.

  Her face was blotchy, her nose red. Her eyes were swollen and glassy. No amount of water could fix that, but she splashed her face anyway, pressing her hands against her cheeks, willing them to calm down.

  She stared herself down. Or rather, she stared Celia down. Celia’s reflection looked back at her. For a moment, Juno could have laughed at how pretty Celia looked even after enough crying to flood the town.

  “Act normal,” she whispered to herself. “Just act normal, like Celia would. You’ve done this before.”

  She dried her face with a towel, took a shaky breath, and opened the door.

  Downstairs, Anna and Mark were shrugging off their coats in the entryway. Anna’s cheeks were pink from the cold, her light hair slightly windswept. Mark was rubbing his gloved hands together, muttering something about frozen fingertips.

  “Oh, there she is,” Anna said, spotting Juno. She opened her arms without hesitation, and Juno stepped into the hug out of instinct.

  Her body still felt tight, trying her hardest to hold herself together. Anna smelled like snow and cinnamon gum.

  “You’re home early,” Juno murmured.

  Anna leaned back and frowned. “Celia, it’s Saturday. We always leave work earlier on Saturdays.”

  Juno’s heart jumped. “Oh. Right. Sorry, I lost track of the days.” She tried to laugh, but it came out brittle. “Busy week.”

  Anna’s eyes didn’t leave her face. Her grip on Juno’s shoulders tightened ever so slightly. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Of course,” Juno said quickly. “Just a little tired. Exams are coming up.”

  Mark gave her a warm smile as he passed by. “That time of year, huh? I’m gonna whip something up in the kitchen. Hope no one minds lentil soup.”

  “Sounds great,” Juno said as she pushed herself to smile.

  “Where’s Aaron?” Anna asked, glancing toward the stairs.

  “He’s… studying,” Juno said, the words coming out quick and tightly. Her fingers tensed against the hem of her sweater. “Been holed up in his room all day.”

  Another lie. Who knew what Aaron could be doing there, after what he told her.

  She could feel Anna watching her, and she didn’t dare meet her gaze.

  “C’mon, sit with me,” Anna said as she sat down on the couch in front of the fireplace, now blazing to life. She patted the cushion beside her.

  Juno lowered herself carefully onto the couch. The warmth of the fireplace flickered across them, casting long shadows. Anna reached into her bag and pulled out a stack of large, plastic-covered red albums.

  “Found these at work,” she said. “I brought them home. Thought you might want to look through your childhood photos with me.”

  Juno’s stomach twisted.

  Anna opened the first album, flipping gently through pages filled with soft, faded images. There was a baby girl with blonde curls and an unmistakable gleam in her eye.

  A younger Anna, smiling wide, held her in nearly every picture. There were birthday cakes, tricycles, and playgrounds.

  Juno felt her breath stutter. Her stomach dropped like she'd missed a step on a staircase, and suddenly the room was shrinking around her. The edges of the photo album blurred for a moment, her vision tunneling in on that frozen version of a childhood she’d never lived.

  The real Celia’s childhood.

  She hadn't been prepared for this. Not even close.

  Celia’s journals—meticulous, almost obsessive in some places—had documented everything from class schedules to cocoa flavor notes. But her childhood? Practically a void.

  Just a few vague mentions: a different village on the city’s northern edge, a small house, long walks to school. Nothing specific. Nothing that could prepare Juno for this parade of frozen memories, for the raw intimacy of these snapshots.

  For Anna’s glowing pride in each photograph, in every story tied to the tiny girl Juno was now pretending to be.

  Her heart pounded harder with each flip of the page, her mouth suddenly dry. Anna’s face started to sound far away, like she was drifting. She didn’t know about these birthday parties. She couldn’t remember these parks. And she had no idea which of these strangers’s faces meant something, or didn’t.

  Every inch of her skin prickled with awareness. One wrong word, one wrong reaction, and the illusion would snap. And what then? Would Anna look at her and know?

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  She forced her face to stay neutral, maybe a little soft with “nostalgia,” but it was getting harder with every passing second. As each second passed, every yellow photograph whispered liar.

  Her hands trembled slightly as she watched Anna turn the pages, the glossy edges of the photos catching the light—and her guilt.

  “That’s you at the old park by the train station,” Anna said, pointing. “You used to insist on feeding the pigeons every time we went. I think you named one Bernard.”

  Juno’s face froze in what she hoped was a smile. “Bernard. Right. Classic.”

  Anna chuckled, then flipped the page.

  “This was your first day at preschool. You cried so hard when I dropped you off. I had to come back during lunch just to calm you down.”

  Juno’s throat tightened, dry and scratchy. Did Celia actually do that? Was Anna testing her? Laying the memory out like bait, waiting to see if she'd step into the wrong story?

  The thought sent a spike of panic through her chest, sharp and disorienting. Her mind scrambled, flipping through every journal page, every scribbled note Celia had left behind, but there was nothing. No confirmation. No lifeline.

  She could feel it now: the pressure creeping in behind her ribs, winding around her lungs like ivy. The paranoia, the guilt, the sick ache of not knowing pressed in on her with every breath she took.

  Anna glanced sideways at her. “Do you remember any of these?”

  Juno hesitated. “Bits and pieces. It’s all a little… fuzzy.”

  More photos. More memories she didn’t own.

  Anna pointed to a picture of young Celia holding a plastic sword, dressed as a pirate. “Here you were when you became obsessed with pirates. You made me dress as a parrot for Halloween that year,” she explained, laughing softly at the memory.

  “Oh. Right. That was funny.” Juno forced a chuckle. “Classic me.”

  Anna turned another page, and Juno’s eyes caught something peeking from the back: a photo yellowed with age, half-stuck between pages.

  She gently tugged it free.

  A man in the photograph looked directly at her. He had dark hair and a thick mustache, wearing a worn button-up. He was sitting on a sunlit bench, holding baby Celia in his arms.

  She was tiny, bundled in a pastel onesie, her chubby hands reaching up toward his face. Both of them were smiling, soft and unguarded. A tender, innocent moment, perfectly preserved in yellowing film.

  Juno stared at it, her heart beating a little too loud. This must be Celia’s real dad, she guessed silently. Or... my dad, I guess. For now.

  She turned the photo toward Anna, forcing her lips into a careful, uncertain smile. “He looks… happy,” she said softly.

  The change in Anna was immediate.

  Her face fell, like someone had yanked the light out of her.

  “What?” Anna said quietly.

  Juno blinked. “I mean… he looks happy.”

  Anna stared at her in disbelief. “Why would you say that?”

  “I just—he’s holding me as a baby, and he’s smiling, so I thought—”

  Anna pulled the photo from her hand, her expression darkening with something Juno didn’t recognize. Anger? Hurt?

  “After what he did to us? To you? Celia, how could you say that?”

  Juno’s mouth opened but no words came. Her heart thudded painfully. She had no idea what Anna was talking about. Nothing in Celia’s journals mentioned this. Nothing at all.

  Anna’s voice was shaking now. “You swore you never wanted to see his face again. You said that. You meant that. How could you forget?”

  “I…” Juno’s voice cracked. The tears she had just shed minutes ago threatened to come flooding back. This is it, she thought miserably. She would see through me now.

  “I don’t know,” she managed to reply quietly after a moment. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”

  Anna’s eyes searched hers, deep concern now overtaking the shock. “Celia, is something going on? You’ve been… off lately. You’re quiet all the time. You forget things. You don’t seem like yourself.”

  Juno didn’t know how to respond. Her chest felt like it was being crushed all over again.

  "Are you struggling again?" Anna asked, her voice soft but laced with concern and fear. Her hand reached out, gently covering Juno's, like she'd slip away at any moment.

  She squeezed it tightly, grounding her, her touch warm and urgent, a lifeline thrown across an ocean.

  "If something's wrong," Anna continued, her voice breaking the quiet, "you can tell me. Please, anything at all. Even if it’s not what I think it is, even if you’re not struggling again, you know you can talk to me."

  Her hand drifted up slowly, brushing lightly across Juno’s chest, just above her heart, and stayed there for a moment.

  The air between them thickened, and Anna’s gaze sharpened, her dark eyes piercing through the surface, looking straight into Juno, like she could see every hidden thought, every unspoken word.

  "You know you can talk to me, right?" Anna repeated, quieter now. It was clear that she needed to make sure Juno knew that there was no judgment, no barrier between them. Just a promise.

  Again. She said again.

  Juno’s mind scrambled. The word echoed in her head, and for a moment, she felt like she was underwater. Again? What did that even mean? Had Celia struggled before? Had there been something, some kind of darkness in her past that Juno hadn’t caught, hadn’t noticed in the journals she’d poured over so meticulously? She couldn’t remember a single mention of Celia feeling anything less than fine—no hints of any real struggle, no signs that she’d been anything other than the bright, capable person everyone seemed to think she was.

  But why else would Anna say again? Why would she ask, if it wasn’t something that had happened before? Had Celia been struggling with something Juno had no idea about? She tried to piece it together, but the more she thought about it, the more confused she became.

  Juno swallowed hard, blinking fast.

  "No. No, I’m fine," Juno blurted out quickly. Her voice cracked a little as she said it, but she couldn’t let the truth slip out. Not now, not here.

  The lie tasted sour.

  Just then, Mark walked in with three mugs balanced in his hands.

  “Guess what? Found some leftover cocoa in the pot,” he said, grinning. “It tastes so unique, so I added a bit more to it and heated it up. Still tastes great.”

  Anna took a mug with a distracted smile. “Thank you, love.” Juno caught her fingers shaking for a brief second as Mark handed her a white mug.

  Mark handed a green mug to Juno. “Your specialty, right?”

  Juno accepted it with both hands, the heat startling.

  Anna reached over and pulled her into a sudden hug. Her arms were warm and strong and gentle. “Whatever’s going on, we’re here. Okay? You’re not alone.”

  Juno froze.

  She hadn’t been hugged like that by her real mother. Not in years. Not really at all. Just cold hands, cold stares, and colder silences.

  Her mind flickered back to a moment in her real childhood: a memory of standing in the kitchen after a school recital, hoping her mom would say something nice. Anything.

  But all she got was a distracted, “Why are you still wearing that?”

  Juno blinked hard, holding the tears back.

  Mark joined them, wrapping his arms around both of them. “You won’t be hurt like that again,” Anna whispered. “Not while we’re here.”

  And Juno felt it: the sincerity, the love, the fierce protectiveness. The things any and every child should have felt from the start.

  The things she never felt until she was forced to become someone else.

  The world was closing in on her again.

  She pulled back before the tears could fall. “Thanks. I—really appreciate it. I just remembered I have my shift at the café.”

  Anna looked surprised. “On a Saturday evening?”

  Juno nodded quickly. “They called. Last minute. Someone got sick.”

  She stood with the mug still in one hand, grabbed her coat, and slipped on her boots.

  “Well, don’t work too hard,” Mark called.

  “Text me if you need anything, dear,” Anna added.

  Juno nodded and slipped out the door.

  Outside, the cold hit her instantly. But it didn’t stop the tears this time.

  She walked down the street, cocoa in hand, tears trailing hot down her cheeks.

  Celia’s life was not as perfect as she thought. It never had been.

  But maybe, for this year, Juno could be the one to help make it right.