TABLE

Four versions. One table. No truth survived untouched.

To her, truth was never absolute. Everyone carried their own.
She believed that. About everything.

Except this.

This memory was different.

As a child, she was given fragments of the past. Pieces scattered over years. Like loose ends from a tangled ball of yarn. Some could be knotted together. The point of true connection always slipped free.

As an adult, she tried again. Tried to build something whole.
Something never fit.

There were four of them.

Each believed they held the truth.
Each carried a different kind of pain.

One felt responsible for everything.
One chose distance.
One believed herself untouchable.
And the youngest believed she knew the truth.

Because she had held them all.

Too young to protect herself.
Too young to know she was being used as a confessor.
Too young to ask the right questions.

But old enough to remember.

Now they sat together at a table in a dim room. The story surfaced slowly, as if it had been waiting nearby for years.

One by one, they spoke.
Each offering the version they had carried.

The youngest, now grown, felt the ground shift. The ending, maybe. But little else was familiar.

They were wrong.

Weren’t they?

She breathed.
Listened.

By the third telling, it wasn’t her story that unraveled. It was her certainty.

Her grandmother’s words surfaced from the dark:
There is no one truth. Only many truths, filtered through who we are.

And just like that, she was free.

She would never have the whole story.

And that was okay.