Chapter 29 Naya's Warning
Naya chops vegetables like the cutting board has committed a personal offense.
The knife rises and falls in sharp, efficient strokes. Carrots split into perfect coins. Onion halves become thin crescents. The sound is clean and relentless, echoing through the kitchen with a precision that makes my shoulders tighten before my mind fully registers why. Each strike is controlled. Intentional. Nothing wasted. Nothing left uneven.
Evening has settled into the house. Outside, the sky bruises into purples and grays, the last light sinking low behind the trees. Inside, every lamp is on. The brightness feels deliberate, like a ward against shadows. The stove hums softly beneath a simmering pot, garlic and oil thick in the air.
Normal things.
Aggressive normal.
I sit at the small dining table near the kitchen, my laptop closed beside Maya’s coloring books. The design I meant to work on never opened. Maya is in the living room with Eli, curled into the corner of the couch, absorbed in a cartoon that makes her laugh in short, delighted bursts. Each sound lands lightly, then settles, fragile in a way that makes my chest ache.
Naya does not look at me when she speaks.
“You need to stop digging.”
The knife comes down again.
I blink, caught off guard more by the certainty in her tone than the words themselves. “Digging into what?”
She exhales through her nose, short and controlled. “You know what.”
Another slice. Another clean separation.
“I am not digging,” I say carefully. “Things are just coming back.”
That makes her pause. Not stop. Just hesitate long enough for the silence to stretch thin.
“That is exactly what I mean,” she replies. “You do not get to decide how those things come back. Or what they take with them when they do.”
I shift in my chair, the wood creaking softly beneath me. “They are my memories.”
“They are your trauma,” she corrects, finally turning to face me. Her expression is calm, composed, protective in a way that feels practiced. “And trauma does not resurface neatly. It disrupts everything around it.”
Her gaze flicks toward the living room.
Toward Maya.
“You have a child,” Naya continues. “You do not get to unravel.”
The word lands heavy. Familiar. Old.
For a moment, my body reacts before my mind does. Shame tightens my chest. A reflexive agreement settles into my bones, learned over years of being told I was too much, too fragile, too unstable to trust my own perceptions.
And then something else surfaces.
Clear. Steady. Undeniable.
I never unraveled.
The thought lands whole, solid as truth finally allowed to exist.
I never unraveled. I survived. I showed up. I kept a job. I raised my daughter. I cooked dinners and paid bills and learned how to breathe through panic without letting it spill outward. I carried the weight quietly because I had to.
They just kept telling me I had fallen apart.
“I am not unraveling,” I say quietly.
Naya hums, unconvinced. “That is what people say when they cannot see it happening.”
Before I can respond, she steps closer to the table. Her voice lowers, careful now, contained.
“This is not just about you,” she says softly. “Eli already carries enough guilt. He goes too far for you. He always has. I am not going to watch him get pulled back into the middle of something that could destroy him.”
Her eyes flick, briefly, toward the living room.
Toward her brother.
The concern is real. That is what makes it dangerous.
I inhale slowly. “I did not ask him to carry anything.”
“I know,” she replies. “That is the problem.”
She straightens, turning back to the counter. Her voice lifts again, just enough.
This part is not meant to be private.
“Reopening old trauma does not just hurt you,” Naya says clearly. “It affects Maya. Children absorb instability. They feel it even when you think you are hiding it.”
The knife resumes its rhythm.
In the living room, Eli shifts.
I see it from the corner of my eye. His shoulders tense. His jaw tightens. The cartoon volume dips slightly as he adjusts it, grounding himself, grounding Maya.
“You are already on edge,” Naya continues. “If the nightmares come back. If you start dissociating again. If you withdraw into yourself. She will notice. Do you really want to risk destabilizing her sense of safety?”
The words settle into the room like dust that refuses to move.
Maya laughs at something bright and silly on the screen, oblivious. Her feet kick lightly against Eli’s leg. He reaches out without looking, steadying her automatically, his hand warm and sure.
I look at him.
He does not look at me.
I wait.
For disagreement. For defense. For him to say something, anything, that pushes back against the framing that I am a threat to my own child.
He stays silent. That silence hurts more than if he had openly agreed.
The cartoon ends. Maya groans dramatically and slides off the couch. “Is dinner ready yet?”
“Almost,” Naya says instantly, warmth snapping into place like a switch.
Maya hugs Eli around the waist before climbing back into her chair, already reaching for her crayons. Color. Order. Something she understands.
I watch her small hands move across the paper, deliberate and confident.
Protection.
The word shifts inside me.
If protection means silence. If it means erasing pieces of myself to keep others comfortable. If it means letting people decide which truths are dangerous.
Then it is not protection at all.
Dinner passes quietly. Conversation skims the surface. The house settles.
Later, after Maya is tucked into bed and the lights are dimmed, I stand alone in the kitchen. The cutting board is clean. The knife washed and drying beside the sink. Evidence of conflict erased.
I rest my hands against the counter and breathe.
I think of the hallway. The attic. The pressure behind my eyes when memory presses too close.
I think of Naya’s certainty. Of Eli’s silence.
And I decide something quietly, without witnesses.
I am not done remembering.
Not for fear.
Not for love.
Not for anyone else’s definition of protection.
Especially not when forgetting was never what kept me standing in the first place.