Me before you

chapter 3

So Sana fell into her new routine. It was as quick and easy as she'd heard falling asleep was for other people.

She woke up in the morning. She made Louis breakfast, walked him to school. She tried and failed to avoid being goaded into conversation with the gaggle of banal mothers she saw at the school gates every day. She went to the annex in the mayor's garden and cooked and cleaned for an uncomfortably deprived woman. She came home. She cooked and cleaned for herself. She got coffee with Chaeyoung. She entertained some terse exchanges with Wonwoo when he Skyped with little Louis. And she went to bed at night. Easy as one two three.

The reality of each of those things was not quite so simple, but the routine was good. And it was nice to sleep without the city noise rushing on all night.

And though she saw her strange new job as just another necessary mark to check off her list of things to do to support her son, worrying about Y/n had also become an integral part of Sana's routine.

It wasn't like she'd meant to. It just happened.

Much like her first day, the rest of their encounters had stayed professional and acceptably polite, borderline friendly, although Y/n had become quieter and more withdrawn as they'd slipped into routine. Neither of them pried. Neither of them was rude. It was a perfectly acceptable arrangement.

Except how could it be? How could it ever be normal and painfully polite and slightly awkward when she was constantly faced with the fact that the woman could not move.

It hit Sana the hardest when she let herself into the main house for the first time.

She usually walked around the back and let herself straight into the annex if Marco or Sarah were both out, but she'd taken a detour on the way. She was already in a bad mood, having barely escaped some Republican soccer mom babbling around the school gates. Cursing under her breath, she managed to turn the right key in the lock and push through into the foyer, snapping her umbrella closed. Sarah had told her she could leave her things in the porch, so she did, stripping her coat off and smoothing her hair down with a sigh.

Then she fished the annex key from her purse and made her way through the main house toward the back door. She was in the hallway when the picture caught her eye. There was a whole trail of them, framed and gleaming along every available surface. None of them were anything remarkable; wedding photos, birthday photos, old family Christmas photos. But when that specific one snagged her gaze, Sana couldn't look away.

It showed Marco Y/l/n, leaning against one of the police cars and grinning in the sunlight. Beside him was a woman with a friendly smile dimples on her face: her arms were folded casually, her shoulder length black hair has blonde highlights and full of sunlight. Her eyes were bright, squinting in the sun. She was wearing a plaid shirt, Sheriff's badge glinting at her belt. Sana stared at the photograph trapped behind the glass, heart sinking in her chest. She was looking at Y/n, pre-accident.

Breath caught in her throat, she couldn't help her gaze drifting over the other photos: Y/n, wearing a baseball cap and jersey and pulling a face; Y/n, sitting in a booth at the diner, fork suspended in the air; Y/n, wearing a tinsel boa and decorating a Christmas tree; Y/n, laughing, Y/n, standing, Y/n, goofing around.

Sana swallowed, something in her chest shifting heavily. To be so full of life one minute, so able, and the next... She couldn't seem to look away.

And while she stared, Sana quickly realized that all those small smiles they'd been exchanging the past few weeks weren't real. Not in the way the ones in the pictures were. They'd been genuine but they hadn't been real – they hadn't been thoughtless or effortless, wide, goofy, unabashed. They'd been weak and accompanied by dark circles instead of bright eyes. They'd taken work. The contrast was startling.