Each object carried memories and promises of what could have been — the family she had started to believe might be hers, if only circumstances were different.
“Goodbye,” she whispered to the empty room, unsure who she was addressing — the Andersons, her old life, or some version of herself she was leaving behind.
Bag in hand, Sunny crept to her bedroom door, wincing at the soft creak of the hinges as she pulled it open. The hallway stretched before her, dark and quiet. She hurried out and descended the stairs, avoiding the thirdstep that always creaked, then walked quietly along the hall to the front door.
Her feet froze. She couldn’t leave. Not yet. Not without one last look.
Sunny set her duffle bag silently on the floor and turned toward the hallway. She moved like a ghost through the darkened house, each step careful and deliberate. The plush carpet muffled her footfalls as she made her way to the girls’ room.
Their door was adorned with two handmade nameplates they’d crafted together — Maddie’s purple with sequins, Hailey’s blue with dolphin stickers. Sunny’s throat tightened at the memory of that rainy afternoon craft session, their concentrated faces, their laughter.
She eased the door open just enough to slip through. Moonlight spilled through princess curtains, casting a silvery glow across their sleeping forms. Maddie was curled neatly on her side, clutching her stuffed penguin, while Hailey sprawled across her bed, blankets kicked aside, her dress-up tiara perched askew on her wild curls.
“I’m sorry,” Sunny whispered, so softly the words were barely a breath.
She carefully pulled Hailey’s blanket back over her small body.
With a final glance at their sleeping forms, Sunny backed out and pulled the door closed. Whatever happened next, these girls would be imprinted on her heart forever.
She walked silently back to the darkened foyer, the front door looming in the shadows.
Sunny picked up her bag and reached for the handle, her hand trembling. Behind her lay the warmth and complexity of the Anderson home — the makeshift family she’d begun to feel part of. Before her stretched uncertainty.
The baby — their baby — seemed to exist in both worlds, the one certainty bridging her past and whatever future awaited.
Three rapid heartbeats passed as Sunny stood frozen at the threshold. The weight of her decision pressed down on her shoulders, as tangible as the child growing inside her womb.
She took a deep breath, steadying herself for what lay ahead.
Liam
Four-thirteen in the morning.
The red digital numbers on Liam’s bedside clock taunted him as he stared at the ceiling, sleep a distant memory. His mind raced with fragments from the day: the hostile meeting with team management, the photographer lurking outside their gate, Sunny’s strange behavior at dinner, and most troubling, the haunted look in her eyes when he found her packing.
Something was deeply wrong. He had felt it in his bones when he left her room earlier — the tension radiating from her small frame, her avoidance of eye contact, and the mysterious pharmacy bag she had tried to hide.
Was she seriously ill?
Liam threw back the covers and sat up, rubbing his stubbled jaw. The hollow silence of the house pressed in around him, broken only by the soft patter of rain against the windows. Sleep was pointless. His instincts screamed that Sunny was slipping away, and he would be damned if he lost another person he cared about without fighting.
He stood, pulled on a T-shirt, and padded barefoot into the hallway. The plush carpet muffled his steps as he made his way to the staircase leading to Sunny’s room in the upper part of the house. The old grandfather clock in the foyer chimed the quarter hour as he climbed the stairs, each step feeling heavier than the last.
Outside her door, he hesitated. What if she was sleeping? What could he possibly say? ‘I have a bad feeling’hardly seemed adequate, yet it was the truth. Liam Anderson, the feared enforcer on ice, was terrified of what might be happening behind this door.
He knocked softly, the sound barely audible even to his own ears. No response. He tried again, louder this time, his knuckles rapping sharply against the wood.
“Sunny?” he called, keeping his voice low to avoid waking the girls.
Only silence greeted him. A cold feeling began to spread through his chest, a familiar precursor to panic he had experienced only once before — the day he found Kate collapsed on the kitchen floor.
The pharmacy bag flashed into his mind again.
There was only one course of action now.
Liam pushed the handle. The door swung open to reveal a room in disarray. The bed was made but clearly hadn’t been slept in. Drawers hung partially open, and closet doors were ajar. The bathroom stood empty, the light off. But most telling was what was missing — the duffle bag he had seen earlier.
“No,” he whispered, the word escaping like a prayer. “No, no, no.”
