I like carrying the weight. I like knowing where she is. I like being the one who stands between her and anything that might hurt her.
If I'm not protecting Charlotte, then who am I?
Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I don’t know how to be anything else.
She shifts closer, settling back against me.
“I’m not going to let anything touch what we are,” I say.
“I know.”
“I mean it, Charlotte.”
“I know you do.”
Her hand rests over my chest, fingers tracing slow, absent circles. The conversation settles on its own. Nothing else needs to be said.
Her breathing evens out not long after, and she’s asleep within minutes. I feel the exact moment it happens—the way her hand goes slack and the shift in her breath.
A city doesn’t sleep. I’d forgotten that. There’s always something—traffic, voices, movement. No real silence. Just a constant hum that never quite stops.
I lie there listening to it, thinking about the island. The graves under the trees. The unfinished chess game. The pearls. The promise I made about a necklace—about carrying pieces of that life into this one.
I don’t sleep. I just hold her and let the noise exist beyond the walls, letting the world keep moving without us for a little while longer.
They can ask whatever they want. Build whatever version of us they need.
They don’t getthis.
This is ours.
Chapter 21
Charlotte Gallagher
The knock is coming.That’s the first thing I wake up thinking about.
Grandad called last night. Dane answered while I sat beside him on the bed, listening to his side of the conversation.
I’ll see you in the morning, he said.
And now morning has arrived.
We’re dressed in the clothes they sent up.
Dane stands by the window with the curtain pulled back just enough to see outside. The slacks and button-down fit, but they still look strange on him. Too clean. Too deliberate. I’m used to clothes that wear the shape of his life into them—sun-faded shirts, rolled sleeves, fabric softened by years of use.
I’m in a sundress. Light. Soft. Strange in an entirely different way. The fabric shifts against my legs when I move, brushing my skin. I keep noticing it.
“They’ll be here soon,” he says, still looking down at the street.
“Any minute.”
I watch him for a second, trying to see what’s underneath it. Not fear exactly. Something else.
The rescue was the easy part. This is where things get complicated.
Grandad remembers me as his eleven-year-old granddaughter. Christina remembers me as her ex-husband's adopted daughter. That’s who they’re expecting when they walk through that door.
