The empty tables. The incredible food. William’s disappointed expression when he said they barely had customers.
My heart began beating faster as the pieces slowly started to connect.
That restaurant had potential. A lot of it.
The more I thought about it, the clearer the idea became.
I could see it. I could fix it. My years of experience in hospitality surged forward like a spark being lit.
Marketing strategies, operational restructuring, menu presentation, customer experience, staffing, branding—the possibilities began flooding my mind faster than I could organize them.
Suddenly, the crushing weight of being fired no longer felt like the end of the world.
Instead, it felt like something else entirely.
A chance.
Energy rushed through me so quickly that I bounced slightly from foot to foot, unable to stay still.
Jack was right.
When a door closes… another definitely opens.
And maybe, just maybe… this one had been waiting for me all along.
5
JIYA
After putting Lucas to bed, I explored a possibility that had been growing in my mind all evening. It was a considerable risk, and I knew that very well, but if it worked, it would surely pay off.
Sitting down at the table with my laptop, I began researching the costs of renovating restaurants. I opened multiple tabs, read articles, compared numbers, and wrote emails to various suppliers and designers. The glow of the screen lit the dim kitchen while the rest of the house sat wrapped in silence, and for the first time since being fired, my mind felt sharp instead of numb.
My daughter moved inside of me.
I paused and touched my belly instinctively. The small movement made my heart swell with both love and sorrow at the same time. The baby growing inside me made me think of Caleb every single minute of every single day. There was no escaping him, not really. He lived in the child beneath my heart, in the memories I could not silence, and in the ache that still rose without warning. I gazed at his picture every night before going to bed and again in the morning when I woke up. Memories ofthe wonderful times we had shared filled my mind so acutely that tears often streamed down my face. Many nights, I had stood in the bathroom silently weeping so Lucas would not hear me.
Should I check up on him again? Maybe I shouldn’t.
It had only been two days since I had last searched for him online.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I opened another browser tab and began surfing the internet again to find out what Caleb was up to.
Pictures of him appeared at various events with the company logo in the background.
I hunched over the laptop, choking down a sob as I stared at the screen.
Snapshot after snapshot showed him standing beside different women. Caroline appeared in a few of them, but there were many other women I did not recognize. Every image felt like another wound. He looked polished, handsome, completely at ease in a world that had once included me. I hated that I was doing this to myself, hated that some weak and aching part of me still needed to know.
My body felt like it was crumbling in on itself.
It had been three months since I had walked away from him in the hospital, but I missed him terribly. Some days, I could still hear his voice so clearly that it felt as though he might walk through the front door if I just waited long enough. Other days, I reminded myself of what he had done and forced myself to remember why I had left. Love and heartbreak had tangled themselves together so tightly inside me that I no longer knew where one ended and the other began.
Nothing appeared in the news or online about the kidnapping of Caleb’s nieces. I found myself wondering how the girls were doing. Were they alright? Did they continue to havenightmares about the incident the same way I did? Did they wake up sweating and afraid, their little hearts pounding the way mine sometimes did in the middle of the night?
Since the incident, I had searched the internet every day for any mention of it, but there was never even a whisper in the media. The more I thought about it, the more I realized Eleanor had ensured it remained quiet, exactly as Alex had recently suggested. The police commissioner must have been well compensated for that silence.
Alex, my friend who worked as a police officer in Vancouver, had stayed in touch with me throughout the investigation involving the kidnapped Evans children and Jeremy. Because he had known the truth from the beginning—along with the records of the charges I had filed against Jeremy, the threatening phone calls, and the final confrontation—it had been relatively easy for him to close the case. No charges were brought against me.
