Tonight, though, the roles had shifted. Hollie was vulnerable, his breathing deep, his guard down. Elsa pulled the knitted blanket from the back of the chair and draped it over him, her fingers brushing his shoulder. He didn’t stir.
Hollie’s eyes snapped open. For a second, he was just a scared boy. Then the mask slid back. “What are you talking about?” -FamilyStrokes- Elsa Jean- Hollie Mack - Sleepi...
She should have gone to bed. Instead, she knelt beside him, listening. The house was a hollow drum. Her phone buzzed—a message from her mother, stuck at a late shift: “Make sure Hollie’s okay. He had a fight with his dad again.” Tonight, though, the roles had shifted
She showed him the photo on her phone—a grainy image of two women, laughing on a porch swing. Their mothers. Before the marriages, before the men, before the lies. He didn’t stir
He laughed. Not cruel—relieved.
Elsa Jean had always been the quiet one, the observer. She watched the way her stepfather moved through the house, the careful distance he kept, the way his hand sometimes lingered on a doorframe. She watched her mother smile through the strain of a blended family, pretending the jagged edges fit. And she watched Hollie Mack—confident, careless Hollie—drift through life like it owed him nothing.
“Finally,” he said. “A reason why nothing ever made sense.”