Immensely good. I need to keep reading. I’m here for it, the dual pov, the tragedy, the love, the black cat with golden retriever energy hidden beneath the surface, all of it.

Spoilers: Strange timing to read it today, a year after my mother too was found by the police. Very healing to read, with great discussions of grief.

So many truly great quotes, so this is a long one… here we go.

Do you ever feel as if you wear armor, day after day? That when people look at you, they see only the shine of steel that you've so carefully encased yourself in? They see what they want to see is you—the warped reflection of their own face, or a piece of the sky, or a shadow cast between buildings. They see all the times you've made mistakes, all the times you've failed, all the times you've hurt them or disappointed them. As if that is all you will ever be in their eyes.
How do you change something like that? How do you make your life your own and not feel guilt over it?
- Roman, 72

I think we all wear armor. I think those who don't are fools, risking the pain of being wounded by the sharp edges of the world, over and over again. But if I've learned anything from those fools, it's that to be vulnerable is a strength most of us fear. It takes courage to let down your armor, to welcome people to see you as you are. Sometimes I feel the same as you: I can't risk having people behold me as I truly am. But there's also a small voice in the back of my mind, a voice that tells me, "You will miss so much by being so guarded."
Perhaps it begins with one person. Someone you trust. You remove a piece of armor for them; you let the light stream in, even if it makes you wince. Perhaps that is how you learn to be soft yet strong, even in fear and uncertainty. One person, one piece of steel.
I say this to you knowing full well that I am riddled with contradictions. As you've read in my other letters, I love my brother's bravery, but I hate how he's abandoned me to fight for a god. I love my mother, but I hate what booze has done to her, as if it's drowning her and I don't know how to save her. I love the words I write until I soon realize how much I hate them, as if I am destined to always be at war within myself.
And yet I keep moving forward. On some days, I'm afraid, but most days, I simply want to achieve those things I dream of. A world where my brother is home safe, and my mother is well, and I write words that I don't despise half of the time. Words that will mean something to someone else, as if I've cast a line into the dark and felt a tug in the distance.
All right, now I've let the words spill out. I've given you a piece of armor, I suppose. But I don't think you'll mind.
- Iris, 73

whatever mask he had been wearing for everyone else—the smile and the merry eyes and the flushed cheeks—faded until she saw how exhausted and sad he was.
76

Iris spent the rest of that day in a haze, trying to make sense of things. But it was like her life had shattered into a hundred pieces, and she wasn’t sure how to make it fit back together.
83

This has gone longer than I anticipated, but I know what it feels like to lose someone you love. To feel as if you’re left behind, or like your life is in shambles and there’s no guidebook to tell you how to stitch it back together.
But time will slowly heal you, as it is doing for me. There are good days and there are difficult days. Your grief will never fully fade; it will always be with you—a shadow your carry in your soul—but it will become fainter as your life becomes brighter. You will learn to live outside of it again, as impossible as that may sound. Others who share your pain will also help you heal. Because you are not alone. Not in your fear or your grief or your hopes or your dreams.
You are not alone.
- Roman, 87

It was almost surreal to Iris, to return to something that felt outwardly so familiar when she felt inwardly so different.
Her life had been irrevocably altered, and she was trying to adjust to what it would mean for her in the days to come. Living in that flat alone. Living without her mother. Living this new, unbalanced cycle, day in and day out.
88

Iris shut her eyes. Her composure was about to crack, and it had taken all of her will to even get up and dress herself that morning, to brush her hair and force some lipstick on, all so that she gave the appearance that she was fine, that she was not coming apart at the seams.
89

“That’s it. You’re doing great, Winnow.”
“Shut up, Kitt.”
“Absolutely. Whatever you want.”
She glared at him—the flush of his cheeks, the mirth in his eyes. He was quite distracting, and she panted, “Are you trying . . . to tempt me to . . . press onward, like you’re some . . . metaphorical carrot?”
198

“She unfortunately had to sit on Roman Kitt’s lap, nearly all the way to the front lines.”
211

“It’s been so long since I looked at you and truly saw you, Iris. And I realize how much I missed. I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I see you now.” The words cleaved Iris’s chest in two.
227