Before the drawer was ever locked, there was silence.
Not the peaceful kind that settles after a storm, but the hollow, echoing quiet that follows loss?sharp as shattered glass, heavy as unshed tears. Amanda Voss learned that silence young, cradling it like a second child after the first slipped from her arms before he could cry. For twelve years, she folded her grief into corners: beneath beds, inside locked drawers, behind the steam of a second teacup left to cool on the windowsill. She built a life around absence, careful not to disturb the fragile architecture of what she'd lost while raising the daughter who remained?Lily, bright and watchful, who always seemed to know when her mother's eyes were looking through the present and into a past no one spoke of.

But silence, like wood, warps with time. And secrets, even those kept out of love, have a way of knocking.

This is the story of what happened when Amanda finally turned the key?not to hide, but to heal. When grief was no longer buried, but shared. When a bookstore became a sanctuary, strangers became family, and a name long held in the heart was finally spoken aloud.

This is the story of how a woman learned that love doesn't vanish when life ends?it transforms. And that sometimes, the bravest thing you can do is open the drawer... and let the light in.