Dr. Pembrooke rises slowly from her chair. She doesn’t say anything at first, just crosses the room and rests a gentle hand on my shoulder.
It’s steady. Warm. The kind of touch that feels like understanding...
My voice breaks as I manage to say, “I’ve never told that story to anyone.”
She squeezes my shoulder, eyes soft with something that feels almost maternal. “I’m so sorry, Nathan.”
Chapter 37
Ella
I wake up with my sheets tangled around my legs and my heart pounding like I ran a marathon in my sleep. It’s 5:03 a.m. The sky outside is still dark, the city lights painting soft amber patterns against my window. I haven't slept, not after last night.
I keep seeing him.
On the floor.
The whiskey.
The wall.
The photos.
That room.
Thatgirl.
I sit upright so fast my vision blurs. My heart starts racing for an entirely new reason. The photo on the wall in his secret room… the one he shoved me out of…
The little girl had two different colored eyes.
One brown.
One blue.
Just like Aurora.
Scarlett’s daughter.
My stomach flips. A cold sweat trickles down my back.
Could it be?
No… that’s insane. Right?
But I can’t unsee it. Iknowwhat I saw.
Hours later, I’m at the bakery in my office in full investigation mode on my laptop.
I don’t know what I expected when I typed Scarlett Hayes into the Facebook search bar. Maybe some warm family photos, maybe a new profile picture of her smiling with Aurora. Something that screamedhappy mom vibes.
What I got instead was…strange.
Scrolling her wall felt like flipping through an abandoned scrapbook. There she was five years ago, standing next to her husband at the lake, wine in hand, captioned“forever us.”Vacation photos. Anniversary dinners. Smiles that looked real, not staged. And then…
Nothing.
The posts stopped like a car slamming on the brakes. The photos dried up. Her once-colorful wall became a series of birthdays with generic stock balloons, the occasional quote about “strength,” and then silence.
