John B. Allen (MrBallen)

And I walk over to her and she's crying.

And I sense that she's not crying tears of sadness.

She's happy.

These are happy tears.

And I'm getting ready to ask questions here, but she just stops me and points at the surface of the coffee table.

And I look at the coffee table and etched into the wood is the words, I love you.

And she goes, I didn't write that.

Holy shit, dude.

What?

What?

And so I will say the conclusion to this story is this ended my relationship with everybody in the story.

I didn't, this is it.

That's the end of the relationship with these people.

This was so traumatic for me.

It was like, well, I'll just never talk to any of you again.

And I'm thinking, look, think of the answers for what could have happened range pretty much.

It's like, okay, let's go through the exercise of perhaps Nick's mom in the state of grief that she is in somehow picked up on that I had had some sort of nightmare or whatever and took it upon herself to pretend that she too had like seen a ghost or something, right?

Mm-hmm.

Why would you do that to me?

One would be a question, but two, like I didn't give up that I saw anything on that first morning.