“I think I have to move on,” I say quietly. “Or at least… stop hoping.”
Mom nods, even though it clearly hurts her to agree. “That doesn’t make you weak.”
“It feels like it does.”
She shakes her head. “It makes you human.”
I can’t chase ghosts.
But if Faith ever turns around, if she ever reaches back, I’ll be here.
I always will.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Faith
January 30th
If there’sa checklist for “How to Unravel a Person in Seven Days,” I’m pretty sure my father laminated it and handed it out to his staff.
Step one: remove all privacy.
Step two: remove all technology.
Step three: smile a lot, so everyone thinks you’re fine.
It’s been a week since Buckhorn. A week since Evan’s hands crushed my phone like it was nothing. A week since my father’s office became my cage and my name became a brand problem they’re trying to manage back into place.
And I haven’t been alone once.
Not the real kind of alone. Not the kind where you can stand in front of a mirror and make a face and let it stay there. Not the kind where you can cry without someone hearing it and logging it and reporting it like it’s data.
No. I’ve been accompanied.
Escorted.
Supervised.
If I so much as walk to the bathroom, there’s a pause at the door, the faint shift of weight, the sense that someone is just on the other side waiting to make sure I come back out again.
It’s subtle enough that if I tried to explain it to someone who hasn’t lived inside my father’s gravity, they’d say,Faith, you’re being dramatic.
But that’s the thing.
My father doesn’t do dramatic.
He does controlled.
He does polite containment.
And it’s worse. Because it makes you question your own instincts. Makes you wonder if you’re imagining it. If you’re just… being emotional.
I’m sitting at a desk in a glass conference room that looks like it belongs in a futuristic movie where the main character slowly realizes she’s been living in a simulation.
The table is glossy. The chairs are expensive. The walls are glass, but somehow that makes it feel even more suffocating, because there’s no real hiding. No real corner. No place to fold yourself into.
There’s a laptop in front of me, open to my father’s company dashboard. Analytics. Engagement rates. Brand tone guidelines. Scheduled posts. A million tiny boxes of information, each one perfectly arranged.
