Grant

It’s been three days since Aria left for med school again, and I could already hear the exhaustion in her voice when she called last night.

She barely had the energy to speak, her words soft, dragged out like gravity was pressing down on her lungs. Still, even in her complaints, there wasn’t a hint of regret. Just a worn-out kind of wonder. “I like it… I just don’t understand why I have to do all of this right now.”

I’d smiled to myself when she said it, because that was ...