!!better!!: Missy Stone

She grew up in a house where shouting was the primary language. Her father’s rage was a tide: predictable, cyclical, destructive. Her mother’s silence was the seawall. Missy learned early that to survive, you had to become something harder than either of them. So she did. She became the rock in the current. But rocks don’t feel safe—they just feel solid .

She said, “Yes.”

“Can you fix it?” he asked. His voice cracked on the last word. missy stone