THE DETECTIVE'S WIFE

AN ABSOLUTELY GRIPPING AND UNPUTDOWNABLE PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER PACKED WITH NAIL-BITING TWISTS

MARY STONE

BOOKS BY MARY STONE

The Detective’s Wife

For Brennan, whose love never left.

For Bryar, Jace, and Griffin, who have given me more reasons to be proud than I could ever count.

For Lincoln, who brought a whole new kind of joy.

PART ONE

JO

ONE

Honey traps don’t usually end in weddings. That’s the rule.

And yet here I sit, smiling like a woman who belongs here while my husband accepts an award for being one of the good ones.

Waylen leans against my side hard enough to wrinkle the dress I bought yesterday, after Conor eyed my previous selection and informed me, with all the subtlety of a hostage negotiator, that spouses were expected to “look the part.”

I must have chosen wisely. My husband hasn’t stopped looking at me all evening.

Which should make me happy.

So it doesn’t.

My stepson’s small fingers twist my wedding ring around and around my finger while he wages a losing battle against boredom. “Can we go after this speech?” Waylen’s whisper is the approximate volume of a foghorn.

I pull him close, pressing my lips to his hair. “You asked me that four minutes ago.”

His little face flashes with hope. “Maybe the answer changed.”

A smile threatens. “It did not.”

He sighs with the exhaustion of a middle-aged accountant trapped in a seven-year-old’s body and resumes spinning the two-carat diamond his father placed on my finger six weeks ago.

On Waylen’s left, Romy radiates teenage fury with enough intensity to power the hotel ballroom. Thirteen years old. Blonde hair twisted into a style she argued about for forty minutes. Blue dress she declared child abuse. Arms crossed so tightly across her chest I worry her ribs might break. She hasn’t spoken since we left the house.

Actually, that’s not true.

She muttered, “I hate this stupid thing,” when the applause started for the mayor twenty minutes ago.

Progress.

On my right sit Conor’s parents, both beaming. Rose’s diamond earrings catch the light each time she turns her head to look around the ballroom the Slater money practically built. Stanley’s watch costs more than my first car.

They’ve both been kind to me in the months I’ve known them. They raised a man wealthy enough to never work a dangerous day in his life. To my knowledge, they never pressured Conor toward finance or the family business, never made him feel foolish for becoming a cop instead.

Which somehow makes all this worse.

At the front of the ballroom, my husband stands near the stage speaking with the police chief while a slideshow cycles through photographs behind him. Arrests. Award ceremonies. Press conferences. Community events. Every image tells the same story.

Detective Conor Slater.

Husband.

Father.

Protector.

Good man.

I clap with everyone else.

This is the only way through.

The children deserve an ending that doesn’t leave them standing in doorways waiting for yet another mother who never comes home. I can give them that much, at least.

The room eats nights like this up. Cops love heroes almost as much as they love convincing themselves they can spot monsters a block away. The irony presses against the back of my teeth.

Waylen taps my ring against my knuckle. “How long do speeches usually take?”

“Depends. Did the person save a school bus full of nuns?”

His hazel eyes go wide. “Did Dad save nuns?”

“No. But if they keep talking, I’m sure someone will claim he did.”

That earns me a grin that makes me grin in return. Waylen’s oversized front teeth are adorable. Braces are in his future.

Romy rolls her eyes so hard I half expect to hear something pop. “People only joke when they’re uncomfortable or trying too hard.”

The words land harder than she realizes.

Because she’s right.

I smooth a nonexistent wrinkle from my dress and glance toward the stage again.

Conor catches my eye, and that damn smile curls my toes before my brain can intervene. Warm. Steady. Intimate.

I smile back at the man who hands me a fresh cup of coffee every single morning, who covers me up when I fall asleep reading patient files, who once drove an hour through a thunderstorm because I casually mentioned craving banana pudding from a restaurant in Knoxville.

A smile can be evidence. People misunderstand that.

As a forensic psychiatrist, I know it isn’t all about dramatic courtroom testimony and serial killers describing childhood trauma in flat voices while juries stare in horror. Most of it is patterns. Tiny fractures. Behavior repeated often enough that it stops being coincidence.

Conor lies in careful places. By omission first. Minimization second. Charm third. Never all at once because that would be sloppy.

The chief approaches the podium, and the room settles again.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” Lyle Jenners has a good-ole-boy warmth that’s simultaneously disarming and unsettling. “There are officers who do the job, and then there are officers who remind the rest of us why the badge matters.”

More applause.

Conor ducks his head with practiced modesty. Another calculated instinct. Never absorb admiration too eagerly. People distrust hunger that’s too visible.

I clap along with everyone else.

The chief launches into the story behind tonight’s award—a child trafficking case, interstate co-ordination, a fourteen-year-old girl recovered alive—and Conor’s expression shifts in a way most people in this room will miss entirely. The tightening around his mouth. The subtle repositioning of his stance once the attention turns emotional instead of celebratory.

Stress response.

I wonder what’s bothering him right now. Could it be the⁠—

“You do that all the time,” Romy hisses. The words are laced with contempt.

“Do what?”

“Watch him like that.”

Children observe more than adults give them credit for.

“I’m married to him.” I attempt an unbothered grin. “I’m allowed.”

Her hazel eyes are much colder than her brother’s. “That’s not what I mean.”

Before I can answer, Conor leans toward the microphone. “I want to thank Chief Jenners and everyone in this room who does this work every single day.” His voice is one of the most attractive things about him, radiating a warmth so effortless it bypasses judgment all on its own. “I also want to thank my family.”

Waylen sits straighter. “That’s us.”

Conor looks toward our table. His gaze finds mine before sliding to the kids. “I couldn’t have gotten through this past year without Han…” He catches himself, clears his throat and recovers quickly. “Honestly, without the people in my corner. My beautiful wife, Jo. My amazing kids, Romy and Waylen.”

“He almost said Mommy’s name,” Waylen whisper yells.

Romy has gone very still. Conor’s parents have too.

Right here in front of a ballroom full of people.

I pick up my water glass and take a slow sip because it gives me something to do, when what I actually want is to walk out of this ballroom and keep going until I hit the Tennessee River.

I smile instead.

The supportive wife, who understood, when she married him, exactly what she was walking into.

Except I didn’t. I understood some of it. I understood enough of it. But there are parts of Conor Slater I didn’t account for, and those are the parts that keep me up at three in the morning listening to him breathe.

The applause swells as the chief picks up a plaque the approximate size of a basset hound.

I’m already trying to figure out where it’ll go. Conor’s home office is a museum of himself, filled with commendations, framed citations and department photographs going back fifteen years. Every surface accounted for. Every inch of wall spoken for.

There’s one spot that could work. Above the credenza, beside the window. But that’s where one of the many wedding photographs lives. Conor and Hannah on the steps of a white church, both squinting into afternoon sun, Hannah’s dress catching the wind. It’s a beautiful photograph. I’ve spent more time studying it than I’d like to admit.

I wonder if he’ll notice if I replace it with the plaque?

The answer arrives before I finish the thought. He’d be furious in that carefully restrained, condescending way, where the warmth of his voice is worse than shouting. He’d hang the portrait back up without a word, and I’d spend a week waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I smile at my husband.

He smiles back.

Waylen straightens but doesn’t let go of my hand. Romy slumps deeper into her chair out of pure principle.

The chief takes the mic, balancing the giant plaque in one hand. “The Sweetwater Police Department is proud to⁠—”

“Detective Slater, did you kill your wife?”

The question detonates from the back of the room. Every head turns. The chief goes rigid at the podium, mouth still open around the word he didn’t finish. A reporter pushes past two uniformed officers near the entrance, phone raised, already recording.

Conor doesn’t move.

Most innocent people react to an accusation like that immediately—anger, confusion, shock. Conor goes perfectly still. Assessing. Calculating the landscape.

I’ve witnessed this response more than once.

The reporter keeps going. “Do you believe Hannah Slater is still alive?”

Beside me, Waylen whimpers while Romy pales.

Another reporter joins in from near the side wall. “Detective Slater, why did your wife leave without contacting her children?”

“Were there domestic violence complaints inside the home?”

“Did investigators outside the police department fully clear you?”

The room explodes. Officers surge forward. Reporters shout over one another. Chairs scrape against the floor.

Waylen’s grip on my hand tightens to the point of pain.

Romy moves too, but not away from me. Toward me. Her fingers clamp around my sleeve while another burst of shouting erupts near the stage.

The touch almost takes my breath.

My stepdaughter rarely touches me on purpose.

“It’s okay.” I spread my arms like a mother duck, gathering her children close. “We’re leaving.”

I guide them toward the closest exit, Waylen pressed against my side, Romy’s hand still fisted in my sleeve. Rose and Stanley are at our heels. The reporters change tactics and begin shouting at me instead.

“Did you know you married a murderer?”

Romy’s breathing changes. Faster, shallower.

A cop holds a door open for us. The calm in the hall is almost eerie compared to what we just left.

Waylen’s chin wobbles now that the adrenaline’s fading. “I wanna go home.”

I press my lips to his hair. “I know, baby. I do too.”

Romy releases my sleeve the moment we stop walking, almost like she regrets having grabbed it at all.

The rejection stings.

I crouch in front of them both. “Listen to me. Your dad’s fine. People get ugly when cameras are involved.”

“Did he kill Mom?”

The question comes from Romy. Sharp and direct and absolutely terrifying.

I spent years studying deception, coercive control, psychopathy, family annihilators. Thirteen years of education that trained me to sit across from dangerous people and understand exactly what they were without flinching.

But now, even after everything I know, after everything I’ve done, nothing has prepared me for answering a child.

“Hey.” I need to give them something to do. “I saw vending machines near the conference rooms earlier. Why don’t you guys go with Grandma Rose and Grandpa Stanley and see if they’ve got anything good?”

Waylen’s face crumples. “I don’t want snacks.”

“I know.” I smooth his hair back and press my lips to his forehead. “But I think your grandparents could use backup.”

Rose steps forward, understanding flashing across her face. “Your father will be here in a minute,” she says softly. “I bet he’ll be thirsty too.”

Stanley squeezes my arm as he starts to lead the way. “We’ll keep them away from the damn reporters.”

Before they’ve gone more than two feet, the ballroom doors slam open behind us and Conor strides into the hallway flanked by two officers. He waves them off, his attention landing on the kids immediately.

Always the kids first. As it should be.

It’s one of the things that keeps me unraveled. What a good father he is.

Waylen launches across the hallway. Conor catches him one-armed against his chest and reaches for Romy with the other hand. She resists for exactly two seconds before folding against him.

He kisses the top of her head. “I’ve got you.”

His gaze lifts to mine over their heads, and for one terrible moment, I can’t breathe. He seems genuinely devastated. Wounded in a way that’s difficult to perform.

You can fake emotion. You can perform innocence. You can weaponize vulnerability.

But consistency over time is harder to manufacture. Another thing that keeps tripping me up.

Stanley pats Conor’s shoulder. “Rose and I were going to take the kids to find the vending machine.”

Conor pushes to his feet. “That’s a good idea.” He glances at a police officer hovering nearby. “Officer Jenkins will go with you.”

Waylen wipes his eyes and nods.

Romy hesitates. Her gaze moves between us—watchful, measuring—before she heads down the hallway with her little brother. The second they disappear around the corner, Conor reaches for me. His hands settle on my face, warm palms, steady pressure. The intimacy of it moves through me against my will.

“I’m sorry.” The words are so careful. “I didn’t know they were coming tonight.”

My husband lives beneath a microscope he doesn’t know exists. And not just from the press. I study him automatically, examining each pupil dilation, each breath, each flicker of muscle tension.

His breath is warm and minty on my face. “You okay?”

I genuinely cannot answer that question, so I settle on the universal female response.

“I’m fine.”

He searches my face for another moment before leaning closer. “You know I didn’t kill Hannah, right?”

There it is.

Not I didn’t kill her.

You know I didn’t.

A request for alignment. For intimacy. For trust.

I rest my cheek against his chest while chaos echoes on the other side of the door.

His heart beats steady beneath my ear.

Husband.

Father.

Protector.

Dangerous man.

Conor holds me even closer.

But the question isn’t whether I believe Conor Slater killed his first wife.

It’s why I married him anyway.

TWO

Seven months earlier…

Martin Moore looks normal in photographs.

That’s the first problem.

I sit alone in Interview Room Three with his file open on the table and his face clipped to the inside cover. No wild eyes. No vacant stare that would make a jury lean back in their chairs and think yes, he did it. The convenient sort of madness, the visible kind that makes violence easier to accept and categorize.

Martin looks like a man who holds the door open at a gas station. Short brown hair, clean-shaven, broad shoulders, forty-two years old. No prior felony convictions. No documented psychotic break reported in his history.

Sixty-two days ago, his girlfriend told him she was pregnant.

Fifty-eight days ago, she was dead.

I turn the autopsy report face down. I’ve already read it twice and a third pass won’t make the words less ugly. Blunt force trauma. Defensive injuries on both forearms. Manual strangulation. Contusions around the abdomen. The fetus was sixteen weeks. A boy.

Jessica’s friends report that she had been afraid to tell Martin, which is why she waited so long to break the news.

According to Dr. Oberc’s notes, Martin was “oriented, cooperative in presentation but guarded on affect, and insistent that he ‘just snapped.’ But subject could not—or would not—describe what that meant in anything but clichés. No hallucinations or overt delusions were observed.” Affect noted as “muted, with occasional inappropriate laughter suggestive of volitional rather than symptomatic presentation.”

I run a thumb under the line where Oberc circled that phrase. Inappropriate laughter. On a page full of bloodless legal language, it’s the only thing that resembles a person.

Two pages later, there’s a short addendum in a different pen.

Competency evaluation incomplete due to evaluator death. Case to be reassigned.

Heart attack in the staff parking lot, just over a week ago. I signed the condolence card with everyone else, then inherited a stack of Dr. Oberc’s unfinished cases. Martin Moore is the one on top.

I close the file enough to cover the morgue photographs but leave his intake snapshot visible. So normal and ordinary. The man who holds doors. The man who, fifty-eight days ago, crushed the life out of a woman and a boy who never made it to a crib.

The photographs sit beneath the report in a separate envelope with a red evidence label across the flap. I looked because my job requires me to look, but I’ll never be immune to what humans do to each other.

No one should.

The day the dead stop mattering, I should pack my office, surrender my hospital badge and take up a more honest career, like selling fake supplements online. I slide the envelope back into the folder.

River Valley Mental Health Institute bustles around me in layers. The heat system cycles through its rhythms, a distant intercom dings, a medication cart rolls down the hall, followed by the squeak of institutional shoes on waxed tile.

Interview Room Three is painted the same tired beige as every room designed by people who believe despair can be neutralized with an eggshell finish. The table is bolted to the floor. The chairs are too. The room is maybe ten feet by twelve, and the ceiling feels lower than it measures.

There’s a camera in the upper corner that records audio and video—everything said in this room becomes part of the court record—and a panic button mounted beneath the table near my right knee.

I located the panic button before I opened the file.

I always do.

Optimism is lovely for greeting cards and cult recruitment. In forensic work, it gets women killed.

The door opens, and two correctional officers bring Martin Moore inside in chains. He’s smaller than I expected. That happens more than people would guess. Files enlarge people. Crime scene photographs make them mythic. The living body that walks in afterward is almost disappointing in its ordinariness.

Martin keeps his gaze lowered while the officers guide him to the chair across from me. Shackles at his ankles, wrists cuffed in front, a belly chain crossing the orange fabric of his jail uniform. One of the COs glances at me. “You want him restrained?”

Hospital policy prefers removal of restraints when clinically appropriate. Court-ordered forensic evaluations tend to go better when the subject can write, gesture and use their hands. When they’re given the small dignity of movement. Security stays outside the door. Camera runs the whole time. Panic button active.

A reasonable system.

Reasonable systems fail all the time.

“Remove the wrist cuffs and belly chain.” I’m not completely stupid. “Leave one leg shackled to the chair.”

Martin looks up for the first time.

His eyes are an unremarkable brown, but clear and attentive. There’s intelligence in the gaze.

The officer unlocks the cuffs. Metal slides against metal. Martin flexes his fingers slowly, with a deliberateness that reads less like relief and more like an invitation to pay attention.

I do.

Large hands. Short nails. A healing scrape across one knuckle. It’s not from the arrest, according to the file, but from a scuffle he had with a fellow patient early that week.

The officers step out and the door shuts behind them. Now it’s just Martin Moore and me and the bolted furniture and the camera recording everything and the dead woman and her son taking up all the space between us.

“Mr. Moore, I’m Dr. Adair. I’m a forensic psychiatrist, and I’ve been appointed by the court to replace Dr. Oberc. I’ll be the one to evaluate your competency to stand trial.”

He stares at the folder on the table between us. “You’re the one who decides if I’m crazy.”

He’s already decided how this conversation works.

“I evaluate competency. The court decides what happens next.”

His fingertips tap against the table surface. He stops the moment he catches himself. “What’s the difference?”

“A competency evaluation looks at whether you understand the charges and proceedings against you, and whether you’re able to assist your attorney in your own defense. It’s a different question from criminal responsibility.”

He rubs his wrist. “I already told them I was insane.”

“Insanity is a separate legal standard. We’ll get to that.” I open the evaluation form on my padded clipboard. “I want to start with some background questions, and then we’ll talk about how you’ve been doing. Is that all right?”

Martin says nothing. His gaze moves around the room, just slow enough to seem unfocused.

I wait.

He leans closer, terror moving across his expression, there and gone. “They’re here.”

I mirror his body language. “Who is?”

“The voices.”

I open the flexible safety ink pen. “Tell me about them.”

His hands slap over his ears so fast I jolt at the sudden movement. But it’s his face I’m drawn to. The terror is gone, replaced by a blankness that takes effort to achieve. The hand gesture was theater. The blankness is the better performance, more disciplined, harder to sustain.

“They don’t want me talking to you.” His tone has died as completely as his expression.

“What are they saying?”

His eyes shift to the camera in the corner. “That you work for them.”

“Who’s them?”

His lips tip up, and my stomach registers something my face doesn’t show. That smile belongs to a man who finds this entertaining. “The people who want to kill me. The court. The police.”

I keep my pen moving. “When did you first start hearing voices, Mr. Moore?”

“Always.”

“Can you be more specific?”

He licks his lips. “Since I was little.”

“How little?”

“Young. Childhood.”

“Did you ever tell anyone about them? A teacher, a doctor, a family member?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He presses his palms harder against his ears. The gesture pulls at something in my chest. Some reflex of empathy that thirteen years of training hasn’t fully extinguished, and I’m glad for that.

He glances around. “They told me not to.”

“The voices told you not to tell anyone about the voices?”

“Yes.”

“For your entire life?”

“Yes.”

I scrawl a few notes to give silence a moment to settle. “Did you ever seek treatment on your own? A doctor, a therapist, any crisis lines?”

“No.”

“Did Jessica know about the voices?”

A flicker crosses his face at his dead girlfriend’s name. There and gone. “She knew.”

“What did she know?”

“That I heard things.”

I let that sit for a moment. Outside the room, down the hall, someone laughs. The sound is quickly swallowed by distance and locked doors.

“Martin, what is your understanding of why you’re here today?”

He seems surprised by my change of subject. “I’m being evaluated.” His hands move an inch lower. “To see if I’m crazy.”

“Do you understand the charge against you?”

“First-degree murder.”

“What does first-degree murder mean?”

His gaze drifts upward, like he’s searching for the answer on the ceiling. “That they say you planned it.”

“What’s the difference between first and second degree?”

“Second degree means it happened but without planning.” He shrugs, and his hands slide down to his jaw. “Premeditation is what makes it first degree.”

“Who’s your attorney?”

“David Klein.”

“What’s Mr. Klein’s job?”

Martin’s mouth pulls slightly to one side, his version of a smirk that’s a universal sign of disgust. “To prove I’m insane.”

Not to defend me. Not to protect my rights or to argue my case.

I move to the next question. “What’s the judge’s role in your case?”

Martin seems offended by the simplicity of the question. “To run the courtroom.”

“And the prosecutor?”

The smirk returns. “To make me look like a monster.”

“Do the prosecutor and your attorney have the same job?”

The look he gives me is pure condescension. “No.”

Strong factual orientation. Clear adversarial understanding. Purposeful, organized answers across the board.

Terrible performance.

I turn a page on my clipboard and shift direction. “Tell me more about the voices. Do they speak from inside your head or outside?”

“Outside.”

“Where outside?”

He glances around, his eyes going wide. “Everywhere.”

“Are they male or female?”

“Both.”

“How many?”

“All of them.” He presses his palms against his ears again. “All of the demons.”

It takes heroic effort not to roll my eyes. “When they speak all at once, can you make out individual sentences?”

Martin frowns at the question. “Sometimes.”

“What are they saying right now?”

He glances at the camera. “That you’re a liar.”

“What else?”

“That you know what she was carrying.”

It takes a second to follow his train of thought. “What Jessica was carrying?”

“Yes.”

“What was she carrying?”

“Evil.”

He says it as simply as if he might say a coat or her keys. But his eyes are checking me…watching to see if the word lands.

Psychosis doesn’t perform for applause.

I make a note. “You said the voices have spoken to you since childhood. Did they speak to you about Jessica specifically?”

“Yes.”

“When did they start speaking about her?”

His nostrils flare. “When she told me about it.”

“When did you find out about the pregnancy?”

“When she told me.”

It’s a struggle not to show my annoyance. “How did you feel when she told you?”

A pause long enough to be deliberate. “The voices said it was evil.”

“It? Your baby?”

His nostrils flare. “Yes.”

I clarify the question. “How did you feel when Jessica told you she was pregnant with your baby?”

He stares at me.

I wait. Silence is the cheapest diagnostic tool available, and people rush to rescue themselves from it.

Martin holds longer than most. He’s practiced at this.

“Scared,” he finally says.

“What did the fear feel like?”

His forehead creases. “What?”

“Fear. What did it feel like in your body?”

He scoffs. “What kind of question’s that?”

“A clinical one.”

People who have lived through genuine terror can answer it in ways that are strange and specific and impossible to fabricate without experience. Goose bumps. Pressure in the chest. Numb hands. A floating sensation. The metallic taste that arrives before the conscious mind knows it’s afraid.

Martin’s blank expression gives way to irritation. “You trying to trick me?”

“I’m trying to understand your experience.”

He settles back. “My heart was pounding. I was sweating.”

Generic. Textbook.

I write it down and flip back a page. “Earlier, you mentioned the voices have spoken to you your entire life. Jessica’s sister received a text from her the day before she died. Jessica wrote that you were acting strange and that you frightened her because you kept talking about demons.” I glance up. “Her sister asked if you’d ever done that before.”

Martin goes still. “So?”

“Jessica wrote ‘Never.’ She told her sister that ‘this is new.’”

The blankness that crosses his face is different from the one he’s been using. This one isn’t performed. It’s the look of a man recalculating.

“Her sister’s a bitch.”

“Are all women bitches?”

He stares at me, his lips pressed together. “Women lie.”

A single beat moves through my chest.

I write it down.

“You’ve told me the voices began in childhood. Jessica believed the behavior began shortly before her death. Help me understand the difference.”

His gaze cuts toward the door. The panic button under the table sharpens into my awareness.

“Maybe I hid it from her.”

“For two years?”

“Yes.”

“Without any difficulty?”

That smirk reappears. “I’m good at hiding things.”

The truth slips out so smoothly that he doesn’t catch it before it lands. His face tightens the moment he does.

I keep my pen moving, though I’ve stopped writing words. The room holds the silence for a moment before I move forward. “What did the voices tell you to do?”

“Kill it.”

“Kill what?”

“What she was carrying.”

He can’t even say the word.

“Did they use those words exactly…kill it?”

“Yes.”

“Earlier, you said the voices speak over each other constantly. How were you able to distinguish that instruction clearly?”

He stares at me.

I wait.

The heat system cycles. Somewhere beyond the locked door, a cart rolls past and keeps going.

“I could just hear it.”

“One clear sentence inside constant overlapping noise?”

His nostrils flare. “Yes.”

“Okay.” I make a note. “I want to make sure I understand the sequence of events. Did the voices instruct you before or after Jessica told you she was keeping the baby?”

His jaw shifts. “Before.”

“That’s not what you told Detective Slater.”

Conor Slater from Sweetwater is the lead investigator on this case. His notes were thorough, his timelines airtight. He made my preparation easier before I ever sat down in this room.

Martin’s expression doesn’t change, but stillness underneath it does. “Detective Slater lies too.”

“What did he lie about?”

The muscle under Martin’s right eye twitches. “He said I was jealous.”

“Were you?”

“No.”

“Did Jessica tell you she was leaving?”

His eyes narrow. “She wasn’t leaving.”

“Her suitcase was in the hallway.”

He pops a knuckle. “She needed attention.”

“Her sister says Jessica planned to move in with her.”

“Her sister’s a liar.” He called her a bitch before. He’s editing himself now. Trying to walk something back. “She never liked me.”

It never stops amazing me how quickly demons develop selective memory when cornered.

I tap my pen against the clipboard. “Walk me through the night of August seventeenth.”

“The voices were so loud.” His hands return to his ears. “I couldn’t think.”

“What were they saying?”

“Kill it.” His voice turns manic. “Kill it before it comes.”

“Before what comes?”

“The evil.”

“How long had you been hearing that specific instruction?”

He exhales a long breath, finding my repetition annoying. “Since she told me about the thing.”

“What did you do when you heard the instruction?”

“I tried to pray.” He presses his fingertips together to demonstrate.

“Are you a religious man?”

“I am now.”

“Were you before August?”

A pause. His eyes shift side to side, like he’s frantically rewatching some playback. Like he’s trying to remember what he told Dr. Oberc. “I’m trying to be better.”

I let that settle. But not for long. “What happened after you tried to pray?”

“The voices got louder.”

“And then?”

“I went to her.”

“To Jessica?” I confirm for the cameras.

He wipes his nose on his sleeve. “Yes, to Jessica.”

“Why?”

“To stop it.”

“To stop the voices, or to stop Jessica?”

His hands drop to the table, his fingers pressing into the metal so hard they turn white. For a long, flat moment he looks at me across the bolted table, and the performance shifts in a way that makes the hair rise on my arms. This isn’t the dramatic flicker of a man breaking, but something quieter and more considered, like a door closing.

“To stop what she was carrying.”

“How?”

No answer.

“Mr. Moore, the evaluation requires me to ask you directly about the events of August seventeenth. What did you do when you arrived at Jessica’s apartment?”

“I don’t remember.”

I tighten my grip on the flexible pen. “You don’t remember any of it?”

“The voices were too loud.”

“What’s the first thing you do remember?”

“Being outside.” His gaze drifts. “It was cold. I remember the cold.”

I write that down. August in Tennessee is rarely anything but tropical, but Mother Nature can sometimes be insane.

“Was Jessica with you when you were outside?”

“No.”

“Where was she?”

“Inside.”

“Was she alive when you went inside?”

The room tightens around that question.

Martin leans forward. “She was evil.”

Now Jessica is evil. Not “it.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Everything evil has to die.”

It sounds memorized, and caution raises a warning flag. The words are frightening, but that isn’t why. They’re too polished. Almost packaged. A man in genuine psychotic distress doesn’t produce symmetrical theology on demand.

He’s watching me process that.

I’ve been watching him watch me since he entered the room, and I make a decision I know carries risk.

“Mr. Moore, I want to be straightforward with you about something.” I set the flexible pen down, out of his reach. “There are inconsistencies in what you’ve told me today. Significant ones.”

His elbows widen as he leans even closer. “Bullshit.”

“Your understanding of the charges, the possible penalties, the function of your legal team…all of it is clear and accurate. You track complex questions without difficulty. You correct yourself when an answer moves in a direction you don’t want. Your account of the voices changes depending on what each question requires.”

Red creeps up his neck, and a bead of sweat slides down his temple.

I step deeper into danger. “A competency evaluation is recorded. Everything said in this room is part of the court record. I want you to have an opportunity to clarify anything before I complete my assessment.”

The stillness that moves over Martin Moore’s face is not psychosis.

I watch as rage finds its mask.

“You think I’m faking.”

“I think there are inconsistencies worth examining.”

“You’re a smug bitch.” The words arrive quietly, almost conversationally, which somehow makes them worse.

“Insults won’t help your evaluation.”

“I wasn’t finished.” He leans another inch forward, hands still flat on the table. “You sit there with your little clipboard, and you think you know what happened. You don’t know what she was. You don’t know what I stopped.”

My leg shifts half an inch toward the panic button.

His gaze drops.

He saw.

The change moves through him like a current. He surges across the table, and the shackle on his ankle catches with a sound like a gunshot. The table screams against its bolts. His right hand closes around my wrist before I can pull away.

Pain drives up my arm, but I slam my free hand under the table.

The panic button clicks.

Martin hauls himself higher, half over the bolted surface now, his face entirely transformed. No demons. No voices. No carefully constructed blankness. Pure animal fury, and underneath it something colder. The intelligence of a man who has decided he’s got nothing left to lose.

I wrench hard against his grip.

He tightens it. “You think you’re smarter than me?”

I want to spit in his face. Instead, I’m honest. “Yes.”

His free hand finds my throat. Thumb on one side. Fingers on the other. The pressure is immediate and total and my body responds before my training can. Pure panic surges through me, the primal kind that no education teaches.

The chair traps me from behind. The table blocks me in front. The edges of the room begin to gray.

Stay conscious. The thought arrives beneath the roaring in my ears. Stay upright. Don’t let him pull you over the table.

I claw at his wrist with my free hand and drive my knee up toward the underside of the table, searching for any leverage. Air disappears in increments. My pulse thunders. The gray at the edges thickens.

The door bangs open.

Hands grab Martin from behind—one officer, then two. His grip tightens on my throat even as they pull at him, some final furious insistence. For one terrible second, I understand what Jessica Bennett understood in her last moments in a way no autopsy report could ever show.

The body fighting. The mind going very calm and very focused. The unbearable smallness of what survival comes down to.

An officer drives a forearm across Martin’s collarbone and wrenches him back.

His hand tears away from my neck.

Air hits my lungs in a raging burn.

I fold sideways against the chair, coughing hard, both hands pressed where the heat of his grip is already blooming into something deeper. Martin hits the floor still shouting. “Lying bitch, you don’t know what I saved, you don’t know what she was.”

Officers pin him down and someone is speaking into a radio and someone else is saying my name.

I try to respond but can’t. Not yet.

Martin twists against the officers restraining him and finds me across the room with those unremarkable brown eyes.

The voices are gone. As are the demons. All that’s left is a man who lost control the moment a woman stopped believing his story.

I know that look.

I’ve seen it in files. In testimony. In crime scene photographs with red evidence labels across the flap. It’s never been aimed at me from three feet away with my pulse still hammering in my ears.

I make a note of that too.

THREE

By the time I make it back to my office, the adrenaline has worn off.

That’s the problem with survival. The body postpones its opinion until later. And sometimes, it never gives it up.

I stand in front of the narrow mirror mounted beside the filing cabinet and tilt my chin up. Purple fingerprints bloom beneath the skin along the left side of my throat. One darker mark sits just below my jaw.

I touch the bruise and regret it instantly.

The attack happened an hour ago, but my pulse still spikes every time someone walks too quickly past my office door. I should probably go home.

Instead, I open the bottom desk drawer and rummage through patient worksheets, stale peppermint candy and enough loose paperclips to construct a small weapon. Finally, my fingers catch silky fabric.

A scarf.

Dark blue.

I wrap it around my neck, adjusting the knot until the bruising disappears beneath the fabric.

If I can’t see it, is it really there?

A knock lands against the partially open office door, and I hate that I jump at the sound.

“Come in.”

Dr. Mark Holloway steps inside carrying a paper coffee cup, concern written all over his face.

He’s tall, dark haired and in his early forties. Cedar and citrus follow him into the room beneath the sharper scent of hospital disinfectant.

“I heard Martin Moore lost his mind.”

“He found it, actually. It didn’t last long.”

That earns the ghost of a smile.

Mark closes the door behind him. “How bad?”

“I’ve had worse dates.”

His gaze moves to the scarf.

Psychiatrists spend their lives reading micro expressions and defensive behavior. Trying to hide evidence from one is about as useful as hiding cocaine from a drug-sniffing K-9.

“Jo.”

I turn away from the concern before I burst into tears. “I’m fine.”

“You were strangled.”

“Attempted strangled, thank you very much.” I sink into the chair behind my desk and reach for the coffee he brought. “Important distinction.”

“You should let someone document the injuries.”

“They already did.”

“And maybe go home.”

I glance at my watch. “I have group in ten minutes.”

“Which I can cover.”

I study him over the coffee lid. “You were in court all morning.”

“So?”

“So now you want my patients too? Ambitious.”

He exhales deeply through his nose. “You just got attacked.”

“And Martin Moore just destroyed his insanity defense.”

Mark inspects me for a second longer than comfortable while he assesses everything from my blink rate to my rate of respiration.

Doctors do it to each other constantly. Quiet inventory. Skin color. Breathing. Shock response. Whether the person in front of you is lying about their condition.

The unfortunate thing about psychiatrists is that we all know the tricks.

I change the subject. “How’s Emily?”

The shift to his wife works.

His shoulders loosen slightly. “Good. Tired. Nash is finally sleeping for six-hour stretches, so naturally Nova woke up at four and threw up on our bed.”

“I hope to finally get to meet her one of these days.”

“She’ll like you.” Mark checks his phone and taps out a quick reply. “The pregnancy was rough, and now she’s on Mom duty and all.”

“Parenthood sounds magical.”

“It’s mostly fluids and financial ruin.”

That pulls a laugh out of me before my throat sends up a reminder that I was strangled an hour ago. Attempted strangled. Pain flashes just enough to water my eyes.

Mark’s expression tightens again. “You sure you’re okay to run group?”

“I’d rather work than think about Martin Moore’s hands.”

That answer, at least, is honest.

He straightens his tie. “Fair enough.” As he turns toward the door, he pauses. “You know, most people take the afternoon off after attempted murder.”

“Most people don’t work at the revered River Valley Mental Health Institute.”

A low laugh escapes him. “There’s the institutional trauma bonding.”

“River Valley should put it on a brochure.”

He opens the door. “If one of them bites you, I’m officially intervening.”

“One attack per shift.” I lift a finger. “That’s my limit.”

Mark disappears into the hallway, shaking his head.

I wait until his footsteps fade before exhaling slowly. After giving myself exactly sixty seconds to pull my shit together, I straighten the scarf one last time and head for group.

The women’s process group meets in Conference Room B, which someone in administration attempted to make “uplifting” with pale yellow walls and framed watercolor paintings of flowers.

Nothing says psychiatric stability like aggressively cheerful daisies.

Ten women sit in padded chairs arranged in a loose circle.

Some look alert. Others exhausted. A few medicated deeply enough that blinking appears negotiable.

Trina Cates taps her fingers against her knee while Brianna Sutter flips through a workbook she clearly has no intention of reading. Monica Ellison sits upright with her hands folded in her lap, determined to appear stable enough for her release review next month.

Hope changes posture.

Desperation does too.

Amanda Baker sits near the back wall beside Cathy Davis. Both women wear the same pale blue scrubs issued by River Valley. Both appear heavily medicated. The similarities end there.

Cathy mutters beneath her breath, fingers fighting in restless twisting motions. Paula Harkins and Deanna Melrose lean on each other, both also heavily medicated.

Amanda catches my attention first, and I stare at her chest to make sure she’s breathing. Though she barely moves at all, her respiration is even. Her dark hair was cut badly enough to look almost punitive, uneven chunks hanging around a face that still carries traces of startling beauty beneath the poor hygiene and sedation.

Poor creature.

She stares at the carpet while I close the door behind me.

“Good afternoon, everyone. I’m Dr. Adair, and I’ll be leading group from now on.”

Another of the late Dr. Oberc’s responsibilities I’ve inherited.

A few scattered greetings rise around the room. Lacey Whitfield raises her hand first. “Shonda stole my pudding cup at lunch.”

Shonda, who appears slightly less drugged than others, doesn’t even bother denying it. “She wasn’t gonna eat it.”

“I was saving it.”

“For what? Retirement?”

“Ladies.” I take my seat and open the folder on my lap. “Let’s try existing peacefully for the next hour.”

“That seems unrealistic,” Paula Harkins mutters.

Fair.

“I’d settle for moderately civilized.”

That earns a few smiles.

Progress. Group therapy only works when people feel safe enough to stop performing for a little while.

“Let’s start with check-in.” I glance around the circle. “One honest sentence about how you’re doing today.”

“Anxious,” Trina blurts out.

“About?”

“My hearing next week.”

Understandable.

Monica goes next. “Much better.”

“Because?”

She smiles brightly. “I slept and have been eating well. I’m truly well enough to go home now.”

I manage a genuine smile in return. “I’m glad things are improving.”

Brianna slaps the workbook closed. “I’m still here.”

“Do you consider that to be a good or bad thing?”

She stares at me for a long moment. “I’m honestly not sure.”

A few laughs ripple through the group. Even Cathy stops muttering long enough to glance up.

I let the conversation move naturally for a while after that. Sleep issues. Medication complaints. Family anger. Fear of release. Fear of never being released.

Real worries.

Human worries.

By the thirty-minute mark, the room actually feels grounded.

That’s when Amanda speaks for the first time. Softly. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

The words slur together badly enough that Cathy glances over with irritation. “That’s my line.”

Paula rubs her eyes. “We all say that.”

Amanda shakes her head slowly. “No. I mean…really.” Her voice catches on the last word, like the medication has to fight its way through before allowing sound to escape.

I study her more carefully.

“They think I’m someone else,” Amanda continues.

The room seems to sigh.

“Who do they think you are?” I ask gently.

“Amanda.”

“And who are you?”

She blinks slowly. For one strange second, grief moves across her face so nakedly that I nearly glance away.

Then it’s gone.

Before she can answer, Cathy leans forward hard enough that her chair squeals against the floor. “That’s what I keep telling them!”

Every head turns toward her.

“Here we go,” Monica mutters.

“Nobody listens.” Cathy grips her hair and pulls. “They just drug you until you stop arguing.”

“Cathy”—I glance at the nurse standing by the window, who’s already moving to the phone—“we’ve talked about this.”

“No, Dr. Oberc talked about it.” Spit gathers at the corner of her mouth. “You people keep calling me Cathy. That’s not my damn name.”

Amanda looks over at her so slowly, it’s like her head’s being cranked.

Something flickers between them. Recognition maybe. Or simply shared confusion.

“They changed everything,” Amanda mumbles.

Cathy latches on. “Yes! It’s a conspiracy!”

The room shifts.

Patients who’d been half asleep minutes ago start paying attention now. Chaos is more interesting than healing and always will be.

Cathy scratches her arms, leaving deep welts behind. “They took my son. All the babies.”

Lacey rolls her eyes. “Not that again.”

“The babies all died and my⁠—”

“Shut up,” Monica screams. She covers her ears and yells the two words over and over.

Cathy starts crying, terrified sobs coming from deep inside her. “They keep saying I’m sick.”

“You are sick, Cathy,” Shonda snaps.

“I’m not Cathy!”

I glance at the nurse, who’s speaking into the phone.

“Okay.” Standing, I try to calm the group before the spiral gains momentum. “Let’s slow this down.”

Cathy surges to her feet and nearly stumbles to her knees but catches herself on the chair. “They changed my name!”

Amanda flinches hard enough that her chair scrapes backward.

“Nobody’s changing names,” Monica says cautiously. “I’ve always been Monica.”

Trina nods. “Me too.”

Cathy rounds on her. “You think they can’t?”

The room deteriorates fast.

Voices overlap as patients argue. Trina bursts into sobbing tears because other people’s distress triggers her own. Lacey laughs nervously. Amanda stares at the floor whispering something too slurred to catch.

I take a step toward Cathy. If I can calm her, the others will follow. “Everyone take a breath.”

The conference room door opens behind me, and Mark Holloway steps inside.

Perfect timing.

“Trouble?” He takes in the scene. “Two more are coming.”

Cathy freezes. Every muscle in her body locks. Her face drains white beneath the flushed agitation.

Then rage crashes over her so violently I physically step backward.

“That’s him!”

Mark’s face tightens. His expression says not this again.

Cathy points directly at him with trembling fingers. “He did this to me.”

“Cathy.” Mark lifts both hands in a gesture meant to soothe. “I think you’re confused.”

“No!” She grabs the sides of her head. “You told them I was crazy!”

Mark takes one slow step forward. Calm voice. Open posture. Experienced psychiatrist handling escalation.

“Cathy, nobody’s trying to hurt you.”

Wrong sentence.

The second the words leave his mouth, she lunges.

The chair crashes sideways as Cathy throws herself across the room with shocking speed for someone so medicated. Her hands catch Mark high across the chest before anyone reacts. “You took the babies!”

Mark stumbles back into the wall hard enough to rattle one of the framed paintings.

Techs burst through the doorway a second after that, and everything devolves into noise.

Shouting. Patients crying. Shoes squeaking. Cathy screaming that her name is Emily while two staff members struggle to restrain her safely.

Amanda curls into a ball, arms wrapped around herself.

Twenty minutes later, the conference room is clear. Mark straightens his tie while one of the behavioral techs finishes the incident report.

It’s my turn to be concerned about him. “You all right?”

Mark runs a hand through his hair. “I’ve been attacked by smaller librarians.”

I can’t even manage a smile. “Did she scratch you?”

He checks his neck absently. “Only my dignity.”

A tired laugh slips out before my bruised throat punishes me for it.

Mark notices. “We should really stop getting assaulted at work.”

“Management gets weird about morale.”

That earns another low laugh.

But even after the room empties and the chairs are reset and the noise fades back into the ordinary buzz of institutional life, the session lingers unpleasantly beneath my skin.

Two women insisting they’re someone else.

One terrified. One barely coherent. And both utterly certain no one believes them.

Which is ironic, considering where I’m headed next.

Sweetwater.

Detective Conor Slater.

With a secret no one would believe either.

FOUR

Rush hour crawls through Chattanooga like a punishment designed for people already having a terrible day.

By the time I merge onto I-75 North, the sky has turned the dull gray-blue of early evening, and every muscle in my body aches in places I won’t fully appreciate until tomorrow. My throat throbs each time I swallow.

Worth it.

I adjust the scarf at a stoplight and catch my reflection in the rearview mirror. Tired eyes. Faded lipstick. Bruises hidden beneath dark blue fabric and professional composure.

Close enough.

The smart decision would be going home. My townhouse in Cleveland is forty minutes closer than Sweetwater. Long shower. Sweatpants. Silence. Maybe enough wine to chemically erase Martin Moore’s hands from my nervous system for one blessed night.

Instead, I stay in the left lane.

This conversation deserves to happen face to face.

That’s the explanation I give myself anyway.

Phone calls flatten people. Details disappear. You miss the pauses, the body language, the tiny fractures that matter more than words ever do. Especially with violent men. Especially with detectives. And Detective Conor Slater deserves more than a rushed voicemail after spending weeks building a murder case against a man who strangled me this morning.

Attempted strangled.

Rain started twenty minutes ago, light enough to smear the windshield without fully committing to becoming a storm. Tennessee weather has commitment issues.

The Cleveland exit sign appears ahead.

Home.

Eighteen months ago, that sign would’ve meant nothing. Now it tugs at me with an ache I don’t have time to indulge. My chest tightens at the thought of a hot shower, locked doors, and twelve uninterrupted hours alone. I drive past the exit anyway, only allowing myself a single glance as the sign disappears in the rearview.

I force my focus back on the road ahead of me, where it has to be right now.

Most psychiatrists go into the profession to solve themselves. We pretend otherwise. We use cleaner language. Intellectual curiosity. Passion for vulnerable populations. Fascination with trauma systems. Most of us are lying. Something inside each of us broke early, and instead of fixing it, we built careers around studying the fracture.

Mine started long before med school. Long before my marriage collapsed under grief and resentment and all the ugly little things people politely call incompatibility when they don’t want to discuss infertility at dinner parties.

I glance toward the passenger seat where Martin Moore’s file rests beside my purse. The state believes Jessica Bennett’s pregnancy got her killed, as though the state of her uterus had made her a target.

Statistics agree.

Homicide remains one of the leading causes of death for pregnant women in this country, which tells you everything you need to know about how we value motherhood. Or women, for that matter.

My ex-husband used to avoid looking at babies by the end. He simply couldn’t. Every stroller became a funeral procession for the life we thought we were building.

The memory presses against my ribs. I roll my shoulders and focus on the road.

There’s no point bleeding over old wounds.

That marriage died a year before the paperwork finalized it. Some things rot slowly. Others disappear all at once. My fingers drift toward the scarf at my throat before I catch myself.

Amanda Baker’s face surfaces briefly in my mind. Sedated. Slurring. “I’m not supposed to be here.” Then Cathy Davis, gripping her own hair, screaming that her name is Emily. Two women trapped inside identities they rejected, each utterly certain no one believed them.

The thought lingers like smoke with nowhere to go.

Mental illness can create astonishingly elaborate false narratives. Delusions protect people, and the mind rewrites reality when reality becomes unbearable. I understand that professionally. Personally too, if I’m honest. The human brain will do almost anything to survive humiliation.

I pass a billboard advertising a personal injury attorney beside a church sign warning that The End Is Near.

Tennessee also commits to emotional extremes.

My GPS estimates another twenty-three minutes to Sweetwater. Not the first trip I’ve made there. Not even close.

I first met Detective Conor Slater nine months ago during a consultation involving a domestic homicide suspect transferred through River Valley for psychiatric observation. Conor arrived carrying three binders, legal pads dense with meticulous notes and exhaustion carved deep enough beneath his eyes that I registered it before anything else.

Not handsome first.

Tired first.

That was more important.

Most men perform authority when they walk into locked psychiatric facilities. Conor walked in already listening. I respected that before I respected anything else. Afterward came the other things. The steadiness. The frightening competence. The way suspects relaxed around him, as though his attention had a gravitational pull that made people feel, against all logic, that he was on their side.

That’s the best kind of dangerous.

The worst interrogators are the ones who throw the proverbial mug at a wall. The best ones make you genuinely believe they understand you. That they’re rooting for you. That the truth, delivered into their special brand of attentiveness, will be held safely in their hands.

Conor is the best kind.

He thanked me after that first consultation, said I’d caught inconsistencies in the suspect’s timeline that changed the direction of his case. Most detectives thank experts because professionalism requires it but Conor had sounded genuinely grateful.

The next case brought another consultation. Then another. Over time, our conversations stretched longer than necessary. Coffee appeared during late meetings. Small personal details surfaced naturally. A joke here. A look there. Careful steps, careful enough that neither of us had to acknowledge what was happening.

At least not out loud.

I take the Sweetwater exit as rain thickens against the windshield. Rainwater glistens across the streets under orange traffic lights. Downtown Sweetwater looks exactly like the sort of town people describe as safe right before a documentary reveals three bodies buried beneath someone’s shed.

The police department sits across from city hall in a brick building that tries very hard to look solid and reassuring. I park beneath a flickering light and kill the engine.

For a moment, I don’t move.

I’m exhausted enough that getting out seems unreasonable.

I reach for my lipstick anyway.

Touch up. Blend concealer beneath my eyes. Smooth hair. Adjust scarf. The motions of vanity masked as preparation settle me. Satisfied, I grab Martin Moore’s file and step out into the damp evening air.

Inside the station, fluorescent lighting washes everyone the color of old paper. Phones ring. Printers grind. An officer argues with a man handcuffed to a bench near booking.

The desk sergeant recognizes me at first glance. “Dr. Adair.”

“Evening, Carl.”

“You here for Slater?”

The question lands casually enough to mean nothing, which means everyone has probably noticed our growing closeness already.

Excellent.

“I have updates on Martin Moore’s evaluation.”

Carl nods toward the bullpen. “He’s finishing paperwork.”

I thank him and continue down the hallway.

Conor sits at his desk with his sleeves rolled to his elbows, reading glasses low on his nose, reviewing a report. He looks tired. Human. Real.

Exactly like the first time I saw him.

A half-drunk coffee sits beside his keyboard. Family photos line the corner of the desk—two children at a lake, Halloween costumes, a beautiful blonde woman smiling beside Conor in older photographs.

His wife. Hannah.

I look away before lingering too long becomes something I can’t stop.

Conor glances up, and the exhaustion leaves his face so fast it almost startles me. “Jo.” Warmth moves through his expression. Unguarded, unrehearsed, with no audience and no reason to pretend. Just the two of us under buzzing fluorescents at the end of a long day.

He stands so fast his chair bumps the desk behind him. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I can leave if you’re busy.” I take a half step back.

He reaches toward me but drops his hand before contact. “No. Stay, please.”

His attention moves over me with the methodical, cataloging habit he can’t shut off. Good detectives and good psychiatrists share that particular flaw. We notice too much, which is precisely why I have to be careful.

“I wanted to update you on Martin Moore.”

“You drove all the way from Chattanooga for that?”

“Some conversations deserve more than a phone call.”

A flash of longing slips through his composure. He rounds the desk toward me, moving close enough that the damp scent of rain gives way to coffee and soap. He’s looking at me like he’s genuinely interested in what I’ll do next.

Careful.

“Good update or bad update?”

I adjust the scarf and watch him watch my hand move there. “Both.”

He gestures toward the chair beside his desk, then stops himself. Opens his mouth, closes it.

He’s nervous.

Conor clears his throat. “Hungry?”

My first real invitation.

“Starving.”

His shoulders drop half an inch as he smiles. It’s unhurried and warm, a smile that makes people feel safe enough to tell him the truth. The best interrogators understand that trust is a door, and the smile is the key.

He takes a small step closer. “Maybe the update can wait until dinner?”

I press Martin Moore’s file against my chest and don’t let myself smile back too quickly. “I think it can.”

He reaches for the jacket hanging on the back of his chair. That’s when I see it.

His left hand.

Empty.

The wedding ring is gone.

In the nine months I’ve worked with him, through fourteen months since his wife went missing, through every consultation and late coffee and carefully stretched conversation, Conor Slater has worn that ring. A declaration. An open wound he refused to close.

Tonight, it’s gone.

I already know what I’m supposed to think about that.

What I actually feel is more complicated.

FIVE

The Lazy Beagle sits on North Main, wedged into a row of old storefronts close enough to the police station that many of the regulars wear badges. The front windows glow warm against the street, showing flashes of polished wood tables, high-back chairs and a stretch of bar where locals lean in over burgers and drafts.

Inside, it has that comfortable small-town mix of pub and family place—brick and wood, TVs over the bar, framed prints on the walls. I’ve heard when the weather’s right, the rooftop seating makes the whole corner feel like the town’s unofficial living room.

Conor requests a corner booth.

He takes the seat with the clear line of sight to the door, naturally. The detective in him never fully clocks out.

Rain taps softly against the windows while a waitress drops menus onto the table. Conor barely glances at his.

“You already know what you want?”

“I come here too much.”

“Comforting.” I offer a playful smile. “I was worried detectives survived entirely on gas station burritos and rage.”

“We rotate in barbecue occasionally.”

He orders spicy honey cheese bites and the ribeye while I go for the Wildcat Pasta.

Sweet tea for him. The Oak Leaf Moscato for me.

Conor waits until the waitress disappears before leaning back. “So.” His gaze settles on me fully. “Tell me about Martin Moore.”

Straight to business. I study him for a second, taking in his tired eyes. His strong hands. The empty ring finger.

He notices people the same way I do. The difference is that detectives look for guilt. Psychiatrists look for fractures. In my experience, those aren’t as different as either profession wants to believe.

“Martin’s competent.” I manage to not touch the scarf. “Very competent.”

Conor seems relieved. “He’s malingering.”

“Yes.”

“What gave it away?”

I let out a dramatic sigh. “Let me count the ways.”

While food and drink come and go around us, I walk him through the interview. Martin’s shifting timelines. The exaggerated hallucinations. The rehearsed language. The sudden coherence whenever his control slipped. Conor listens without interrupting. He actually listens, which is rarer than it should be.

“The interesting part”—I dip a cheese bite in marinara—“is that he probably does have underlying pathology.”

“How so?”

“Narcissistic traits at minimum. Possibly antisocial features. Paranoid ideation under stress. But psychosis? No. He knew exactly what he was doing.”

The words settle between us.

Outside, headlights smear across rain-soaked glass. Conor exhales and rubs a hand across the back of his neck.

“Jessica Bennett deserved better.”

Her name. Not the victim. Her name.

“She did.”

Comfortable silence stretches after that. The waitress appears with our food and disappears again.

“Martin got, um, frustrated near the end of the interview.”

Conor’s knife stops mid-cut. “What does ‘frustrated’ mean?”

“He came across the table.”

The warmth drains from his face. “Are you okay?”

“I’m alive.”

The joke falls flat.

“Jo.” The way his voice drops on my name isn’t helpful to my concentration.

“I hit the panic button. Security got there fast.”

His gaze moves to the scarf. “What did he do?”

I should redirect. Minimize, deflect, move the conversation somewhere safer. I’ve done it a hundred times in a hundred difficult rooms. The instinct is there, and I override it without fully deciding to.

“It’s fine.”

“Let me see.”

Keeping my gaze on him, I untie the scarf and let the fabric slide into my lap.

The bruising is worse. Dark fingerprints spread beneath the skin along the left side of my neck and below my jaw, the body’s faithful record of everything it survives.

Conor’s expression changes completely. “Oh, sweetheart.”

The endearment takes up space low in my stomach, warmth and warning arriving simultaneously, indistinguishable from each other.

He slides out of the opposite side of the booth and settles next to me instead. Close enough that I feel the warmth coming off him beneath the cool restaurant air.

“Did you go to the hospital?”

“I was evaluated.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

His hand lifts an inch at a time, giving me time to stop him.

I don’t.

His fingers brush beneath my jaw, and my pulse jumps hard. His thumb moves almost absently against my skin while he studies the bruising. The heat that spirals through me carries equal parts want and embarrassment, neither of which I have any use for right now.

I grip the scarf in my lap. “I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’ve seen worse.”

“That doesn’t improve this.”

He’s right, and I know he’s right, and the fact that I find his certainty more comforting than irritating is information I’d rather not examine.

His fingertips drift along the margin of the bruise. Professional concern. Human concern. A third emotion neither of us will name out loud. The booth grows too small. His hand is still against my skin, and the restaurant noise hushes around us, and⁠—

Stop.

I need to be careful.

Not because this isn’t going exactly as intended. It is. It’s going precisely as intended, his body beside mine, his attention entirely on me, the wedding ring gone from his hand. Every piece in the right place.

That’s the problem.

The plan and the feelings have started to overlap, and I can’t afford to lose track of which is which.

Conor’s gaze lifts to mine. Too close. Too warm.

“That bastard could’ve killed you.”

“He didn’t.”

“That’s luck.”

“Training.” I lift my chin. “There’s a difference.”

Emotion moves across his face. Admiration, or maybe just attraction finally tired of disguising itself as anything more professional. His thumb grazes my neck one last time before he seems to register exactly where his hand still is.

He pulls back, but not far.

His gaze drops to my lips. “You scare me sometimes.”

A smile threatens despite my better judgment. “Occupational hazard.”

“I’m serious, Jo.”

“So am I.” I re-tie the scarf, though my skin continues to register the absence of his hand in a way that’s deeply inconvenient. “Martin Moore killed a pregnant woman. If my testimony helps keep him locked up, I can live with a few bruises.”

Conor watches me for a long moment. “You really believe that?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t decide if that makes you brave or crazy.”

“Those overlap more than people realize.”

That earns a laugh, and the sound catches in my chest.

Dangerous.

I reach for my wine.

Conor stays beside me instead of returning to the opposite side of the booth. His knee brushes mine beneath the table—accident or intention, I can’t tell—and neither of us moves.

“So,” I say after another sip. “When did the ring come off?”

The heat between us cools a degree.

Conor looks down at his left hand resting against the table. When he speaks, his voice is quieter. “Last week.”

Rain taps against the windows. I let it fill the silence.

“I kept thinking she’d come home.” His thumb traces the pale strip of skin where the ring once lived. “Every day for months. Every sound outside the house. Every phone call.” A breath. “The kids did too.”

Emotion twists around my heart. Sympathy, maybe. Or recognition. Abandonment carves the same shape regardless of who carries it.

I ask the question I already know the answer to. “She’s still missing?” I watch his face closely.

“Yes.” Flat. Controlled too tightly.

“How long?”

“Going on a year and a half.” He stares at the rain-streaked windows. “At first, I thought she was hurt. Car accident. Head injury. Something that made sense.”

“And now?”

His mouth pulls at one corner. “Now I know she left us on purpose.”

The story he tells is the one that’s publicly available—the emptied account, the note, the packed bag, the plane ticket, the CCTV footage of a woman who looked like Hannah boarding a flight to Paris—but I want to hear it from him. Hearing it from him tells me things the facts alone can’t.

What I notice is this: The narrative is worn smooth. He’s told this story enough that it’s stopped snagging on the rough places. That’s what grief does eventually, or what humans need it to do. It sands down the edges so you can pick it up without bleeding.

“And the police?”

A humorless smile. “You’re looking at the police.”

“You think she’s alive.” It isn’t a question.

“If Hannah’s dead, we’d have found her by now.” He says it like a conclusion he arrived at the hard way and has stopped arguing with. “She abandoned the kids. That’s the part…” He stops. Starts again. “That’s what I can’t get past.”

Pain first. Rage is further down, still present but secondary.

True. Unless he’s very good.

He might be very good.

The thought surfaces professionally, and I let it register without pushing it aside. I’m attracted to him. I’m also not an idiot. Both are allowed to be true.

“I finally talked to an attorney.” He looks at me again. “About filing.”

The wine pauses halfway to my mouth. “Divorce?”

“Yeah. No-fault, irreconcilable differences. Service by publication if they can’t locate her.” He rubs his thumb against the condensation on his glass. “About six months if everything moves.”

Six months.

I know, in theory, how a divorce works under these circumstances. I researched it many months ago. But research isn’t the same as sitting beside him in a dim restaurant while rain collects on the windows, and he tells me himself that he wants to be free.

Research is a map. This is the territory.

Warmth moves through me, more complicated than I want it to be. The plan is working. He’s filing. He’s here. His knee is against mine and his hand was just at my neck and he called me sweetheart.

Conor looks back at me fully. “Honestly?” A tired smile. “You’re the first reason I’ve had to think about moving on.”

The heat that rises beneath my skin is immediate and complicated and arrives in layers I don’t entirely trust. Victory lives in it. So does something rawer and less strategic that unsettles me even more.

His gaze holds mine a beat too long, and I watch it happen in sequence. Warmth first, genuine feeling underneath that, and then the calculation. Brief and habitual, there and gone so fast he may not even know he does it.

The best detectives always do.

Careful.

So I lift my wineglass instead of leaning closer. “To irreconcilable differences.”

Conor laughs quietly and clinks his glass against mine.

Neither of us moves away.

SIX

Thursday morning, I stand outside Conference Room B holding my tablet against my chest while one of the psych nurses scribbles into a chart near the medication cart.

“You’re three down today.” Nurse Denise doesn’t look up.

“Who?”

“Amanda Baker, Paula Harkins and Cathy Davis.”

“Why?”

Denise glances down the hallway and lowers her voice, even though half the women on this floor are too sedated to care what anyone says about them. “They were snowed overnight after Cathy lost her mind.”

My stomach tightens. “How snowed?”

“Enough that they can’t safely participate in group this morning.”

The answer burrows under my skin.

Chemical restraint has its place—some patients genuinely spiral into dangerous territory—but overmedication becomes seductive in long-term psychiatric care. Sedated patients are quieter. Easier. Less disruptive to staff who are already short-staffed and drowning in exhaustion. And sometimes hospitals stop asking whether quiet means healthy.

“I’ll check on them before group.”

Denise gives me a tired shrug. “Good luck getting any of them conscious.”

I move down the hallway while morning staff buzz around changing linens, distributing medication cups and trying to convince deeply paranoid people to shower. River Valley never really sleeps. It just rotates dysfunction in shifts.

I come to Paula’s first. She doesn’t answer when I knock. Her eyelids don’t even flicker when I say her name. Her respiration is normal. Her pulse too. Making a note, I decide to visit her again later.

Amanda’s room sits near the end of the hall. I knock softly and step inside.

The room is painted a pale sage green that someone in administration apparently decided conveyed healing. The institutional blinds are angled half open, throwing thin bars of morning light across the floor. The furniture is bolted or rounded or both. The window is shatterproof.

Amanda Baker lies curled beneath a thin hospital blanket facing the wall, dark hair spread jaggedly across the pillow. Even heavily sedated, she sleeps like someone bracing for impact.

“Amanda?”

Nothing.

I pull her chart from the door slot. Yesterday’s orders included Seroquel, Ativan and Haldol. Enough to tranquilize most people into another dimension. I glance at the prescribing clinician. Mark Holloway.

I sit on the corner of Amanda’s mattress. The movement barely registers with her.

“Amanda.”

Her eyelids flutter weakly before they open halfway and drift, unfocused, my way.

“You’re safe.” I keep my voice low. “You’re where you need to be. We’ll take good care of you.”

Her lips part like she’s trying to form words through wet cement. Nothing comes out.

Up close, the damage is harder to ignore. Dry skin gone blotchy. Cuticles bitten raw. Hair hacked unevenly. Still, beneath it all, the remnants of something lovely. I brush a strand of hair from her face.

The contact is strangely intimate.

For one brief second, Amanda leans into my hand before sinking deeper into sedation.

My chest aches with a sensation I don’t examine. I set the chart back in the slot and move two rooms down.

Unlike Amanda, Cathy lies flat on her back staring at the ceiling. Her eyes track me slowly when I enter.

“They poisoned me,” she slurs.

I pull the chair close and take her hand. “Nobody poisoned you.”

“That doctor did.” The words carry more anger than her body can support. I open her chart. Mark has prescribed another aggressive overnight cocktail, heavier than what the incident yesterday would typically warrant.

My irritation sharpens. Not enough to accuse him of anything, but enough to make me uncomfortable sitting with it.

“Who?”

“Mark.”

The use of his first name sends a jolt through me.

“Dr. Holloway?”

Her mouth twitches. “Yes.”

“Cathy.” I squeeze her hand lightly. “Do you know what day it is?”

She stares at me for several seconds. “Tuesday.”

“Close. It’s Thursday.”

“No.” Her eyes jitter in their sockets as they drift toward the blinds. “That’s not right.”

“It is. But it won’t feel that way for long.” I set her hand down but keep mine on top. “You’re where you need to be. We’ll take good care of you.”

She’s already asleep before I reach the door.

In the hallway, I check Mark’s office. Empty. His calendar shows he’s in court all morning—the same trial as yesterday. I stand in his doorway longer than necessary.

Part of me feels ridiculous for questioning him. Dr. Mark Holloway is respected here. Patients stabilize under his care. Nurses trust him. Administrators treat him like a load-bearing wall.

But two women on aggressive medication cocktails, both insisting they’re someone else, both under his primary care…

The pattern sits in my chest like a splinter I can’t locate precisely enough to remove.

I spend the next thirty minutes reviewing medication records and talking casually with nursing staff between group prep. Nothing alarming surfaces. PRN sedatives following violent escalation. Increased observation notes. Behavioral concerns. All explainable. All individually defensible.

Still.

I schedule individual sessions with all the women in group for the following week and head back toward my office.

My phone rings when I’m halfway down the hall.

Conor.

I almost do a little dance.

Annoying.

In my most professional voice, I answer. “Detective.”

“That’s cold after last night.”

His voice settles low and warm in a way my nervous system registers before my brain can intervene.

I keep walking. “Professional boundaries are important.”

“You had wine with me.”

“Technically, you had tea.”

“That’s the detail you’re focusing on?”

A laugh slips out before I can stop it. “Details matter. Or so I’ve heard.”

“How are you feeling today?” The tone is huskier, more intimate.

I touch the skin beneath my turtleneck. “Tender. Slightly homicidal during morning traffic.”

“Your normal baseline.”

“You’re learning.”

The warmth in his silence is dangerously comfortable.

I close my office door and lean against it. “You called for a reason.”

“I did.” A breath. “I had a really good time last night.”

The directness catches me slightly off guard. Lonely men usually circle honesty before approaching it.

“I had a good time too.”

Silence. Just his breathing on the line.

“I’d like to see you again.”

So simple.

I sink into the chair behind my desk. “Conor, I⁠—”

“That sounds like a no.”

Tugging on my lower lip, I allow a few extra moments to pass. “I don’t date married men.”

“I filed the papers this morning.” The words escape him in a rush. “I can send proof, if you want.”

Faster than expected.

I can’t show how much that matters.

“What about your kids?”

“They don’t know yet.” He exhales hard enough that the line crackles. “I’m telling them soon.”

The guilt that flickers through me is brief, and I push it down to the place where all my secrets go. “How do you think they’ll take it?”

“Romy’ll take it hard. Waylen won’t understand what it means yet.”

Poor babies.

“What about you?” I ask quietly. “How are you taking it?”

There’s a pause before he answers. “Good. Hopeful. Cautious.” Another beat, and he turns it around. “How are you taking it?”

I stare at the framed degrees above my desk. Credentials. Authority. A carefully constructed self.

The honest answer lives one layer below the one I’ll give him, and the honest answer is hungry. It’s a word I won’t say out loud.

“Good. Hopeful. Cautious.”

“Fair.” The smile in his voice is audible. “So be cautious with me.”

Damn him.

“Charming enough to get away with murder.” I intend it as a joke, though, in its own way, it’s the truest thing I’ve said all week.

His laugh rolls low through the phone, and there it is again…the sound that does something unreasonable to my nervous system.

“When were you thinking?” I ask, already knowing I’ll say yes.

“Saturday.”

“Your kids?”

“My parents offered to take them overnight.” Said too casually to be casual. He planned this before he called.

Interesting.

“And where were you planning to take me?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me.”

Smart answer. I stand and move to the window, studying the parking lot while I think.

He’ll suggest Sweetwater or Cleveland—his territory or mine. But either one moves too fast. I want inside his life, but not yet. Anticipation is what makes people lean forward instead of back.

The middle, then. “Athens.”

“Athens.” He sounds mildly disappointed.

“Neutral ground.”

“You make me sound dangerous.”

I press my fingers against my sternum, feel my heart increase speed. “I think you’re very dangerous.”

Now, that’s officially the truest thing I’ve said all week.

His laugh comes again, lower this time. “Alright, Doctor. Athens it is. I’ll text the details.”

After we hang up, I stand at the window for a moment before going back to my desk. From the second drawer I pull the slim notebook I keep for this. The one that doesn’t belong in any file.

I open it to a new page and write the date at the top.

Then, in the same clinical shorthand I use for patient notes—because the distance is the point, because calling it what it is would require admitting what I’m doing—I write.

Divorce papers filed this morning. Children unaware. Notification planned “soon.” Emotional attachment deepening faster than anticipated.

I close the notebook and return it to its hiding spot.

The worst mistake women make with lonely men is moving too quickly.

The smartest predators understand anticipation.

Smiling brightly, I open my door and head toward group.

SEVEN

At 3:30 p.m., my phone buzzes on the bathroom counter.

I get to see you in exactly one hour.

I read it twice, then set the phone face down and go back to my mascara.

He watched the clock for that. Waited until the minute turned and sent it the second it did, which means he’s been thinking about this longer than he’ll admit and wants me to know it. A man who communicates in subtext is either emotionally sophisticated or extremely well-practiced.

Both possibilities remain open.

I finish my mascara and study my reflection in the mirror above the bathroom vanity. It’s a salvaged piece I found at an antique market in Dalton eight months ago, the frame painted a chalky blue that’s lovely against the warm cream walls.

That’s the thing about starting over completely. When you let yourself choose everything from scratch, with no personal history attached to any of it, the choices come out truer than you expect.

Every room in this townhouse was curated the same way. The bedroom dresser, solid walnut, found at an estate sale in Chattanooga and refinished by hand over three weekends. The kitchen shelves lined with items I actually use and one ceramic pitcher I bought only because it is the exact color of a winter sky.

Books stacked on the coffee table because I read them there, on the couch that took me six weeks to find and cost more than any sane person would spend. Warm rugs. Good candles. Curtains I sewed badly and rehung twice before they fell right.

I check the bruise in the mirror. Three days out, it’s moved from purple into a murky green and brown, fading but not gone. The turtleneck will handle it. I reach for the scarf anyway, the one in a pretty amber that picks up the warmth in my boots, and wind it loosely at my collar.

Martin Moore doesn’t get to dictate what I wear, but bruises invite more questions, and tonight I want Conor’s focus on the rest of me.

By 3:42 p.m., I’m in my car.

The Saturday afternoon is almost insultingly beautiful. October has settled over East Tennessee like an apology for a hellish summer. Low seventies. Sky so blue it looks fake. Trees along the interstate burning copper and red and gold.

A perfect afternoon for a first real date with a man whose wife disappeared fourteen months ago.

Life has a real gift for tonal inconsistency.

The address Conor sends leads to a small lot near downtown Athens, not far from the courthouse square. I arrive five minutes early.

He’s already there.

His truck is impossible to miss—a dark blue Tundra, late model, free of the usual dust and clutter without looking showroom perfect. Conor leans against the driver’s side door in jeans, boots and a dark green sweater pushed up at the forearms.

No badge. No visible weapon. Still no wedding ring.

The smile that crosses his face when I pull in is immediate and unguarded and undoes several minutes of careful mental preparation.

Damn him.

I get out and close my door.

He pushes off the truck. “You’re exactly on time.”

“I’m always exactly on time.”

“That’s either very organized or very anxious.”

“Could be both.”

His laugh is low and genuine. “Fair enough.” He falls into step beside me. “I wasn’t sure you’d actually come.”

“I wasn’t sure either.”

“What changed your mind?”

Let me count the ways.

“Curiosity.”

“About me?”

“Don’t make it sound so rewarding.”

His gaze moves over me, and the warmth it sends across my skin is information I’d rather not have.

He opens the passenger door of the Tundra.

I look up at the cab. “This requires a ladder.”

“There’s a step.”

“How progressive.”

“Lawsuits are expensive.”

I climb in before he can offer a hand, because there are limits to how much damsel energy I’m willing to bring to any situation. He closes the door and rounds the front of the truck.

The interior smells like leather and coffee with something faintly cedar underneath. Receipts tucked into the center console. A purple hair tie looped around the gearshift. Three goldfish crackers crushed into the seam of the back seat.

I look away from the crumbs. His children are not theoretical.

He climbs in and starts the engine. “Ready?”

“For what?”

“That would ruin the surprise.”

“I dislike surprises.”

“Bad ones.” He pulls out of the lot. “You dislike bad surprises.”

“I don’t believe I made that distinction.”

“You did. With your face.”

I glance over at him. “Profiling me on a first date seems aggressive.”

“This is our second date.”

“Our first was a case discussion that got emotionally complicated.”

His laugh rolls through the cab, and I like it approximately 20 percent more than is useful.

Careful.

Downtown Athens moves past the windows slowly. Conor points to a painted square mounted high on the side of a building, geometric and bright against the old brick.

“Patterns of the Past Quilt Trail. There are squares on barns, businesses and old structures all through this part of the county.”

“I never thought a homicide detective would be interested in quilt trails.”

The corners of his eyes crinkle. “I’m interested in a lot of things.” He points to one that’s stark black and white. “That one’s called the North Star.”

Did he just read the brochure? “Are you bullshitting me?”

He laughs. “Nope. My daughter did a report on it last year. Made me walk the entire tour looking for squares.”

“Did you find them all?”

He looks offended. “Of course.”

We wind through town and out onto quieter roads where the squares keep appearing—on weathered barns and white-sided farmhouses and the occasional grain silo standing alone in a field. Starbursts and flying geese and log cabin patterns, each one different, colors vivid against the bleached wood.

“My grandmother quilted.” Conor points at the side of a barn. “Not those fancy decorative kinds. Real ones. Winter quilts. The ones with batting thick enough to keep you warm, made from clothes people actually wore.”

The way he speaks is seductive. The tone and cadence lulls me in.

He slows beside a faded red barn with a painted star mounted near the roofline. “You could pick out pieces of people’s lives in them if you looked close enough. A shirt somebody wore to church. A little girl’s Easter dress. My grandmother never threw fabric away.”

I gesture toward a painted square on the shed. “What about that one?”

He laughs softly. “She’d have hated it. Too pretty to be useful.”

“My mother kept things that were too precious to use.” I watch another square appear on a fence post. “A cedar chest full of fine china and embroidered linens. All of it sitting in the dark.”

“Special occasions only?”

“Guilt objects, mostly. Things she could point to as evidence of effort.”

A hint of a smile appears. “That sounds like several stories.”

“All of them unflattering.”

A comfortable silence opens between us. The road narrows through a corridor of trees, leaves catching the low sun and throwing broken gold light across the windshield.

“Did Hannah like this trail?” I ask, curious about his life.

His hands tighten on the wheel. “We drove part of it once.” The warmth has disappeared. “A long time ago.”

“I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No…it’s okay.” He clears his throat. “It’s okay.”

It isn’t entirely.

But he wants it to be, and there’s something real in that wanting.

Hannah rides between us for a mile or so, invisible and unavoidable, before the road curves and Conor points out another square—red and black on a white barn—and she recedes.

I study his profile. Strong jaw. Tired eyes. A man working at being present while the past rides along uninvited.

He brought her here once.

Is he bringing me here because it worked? Because she loved it? Because some part of him is trying to lay a new relationship down and this road is where he knows how to do it?

Jealousy is an ugly diagnostic category with no billing code.

I look back out the window.

The gravel pull-off overlooks a wide stretch of rolling land, the foothills rising faintly at the horizon, blue-edged beneath a sky beginning to warm toward sunset. Conor cuts the engine, and the world empties of sound. The absence of noise is disconcerting at first. A reminder of how alone we are.

He jogs around the front of the truck and opens my door before I have my seat belt off. His hand closes around mine as I feel for the step with my boot. Unease slices through me as I realize there’s not a single person or house in sight.

“Are you going to murder me and leave my body in a ditch?”

He grins. “Of course not. I’ve got a shovel in the back.”

For one terrible moment, I picture him lowering his wife’s tarp-clad body into a deep hole.

The grin fades. “Hey…you know I’m joking. Right?”

Do I?

I slip under his arm, so I’m not trapped between his body and the truck. “Of course.” I make a show of picking up a gold leaf as big as a dinner plate. “It’s really beautiful out here.”

Silence.

I turn to find him studying me closely. Then he blinks, heads to the tailgate and lifts the tonneau cover on the truck bed.

Curious if there’s really a shovel there, I walk around back and stop several feet away. Close enough to inspect but far enough for a solid head start if needed.

But instead of a shovel, I find something almost as surprising.

Blankets layered thick across the liner. Pillows against the cab. A picnic basket and a small cooler. Battery-powered string lights coiled along both sides, several already glowing faintly in the remaining daylight.

One strand on the left blinks twice and goes dark.

Conor stares at it.

I stare at him.

He sighs. “Ambience failure.”

Eager to lighten the mood, I quip, “You planned for every contingency except the lights?”

“I think that was the backup strand.”

I laugh before I can stop it, and my throat registers a mild complaint about that.

Worth it.

He points at me. “Don’t enjoy my suffering.”

“I’m a psychiatrist. Observing suffering is professionally mandated.”

“That sounds legally questionable.”

“Most things do if you explain them wrong.”

He crouches over the battery pack. The lights sputter once and go out entirely.

“Dead.” It comes out more of a growl.

“Shall we say a few words?”

He tosses the strand into the corner. “They lived cheaply and died predictably.”

He gives me his hand to climb up, and I take it. His fingers are warm around mine for exactly three seconds longer than the task requires. I register every one of them because I’m apparently a woman with a fully operational nervous system and not simply a collection of clinical credentials in good boots.

Unfortunate.

The picnic is simple and ridiculously considered. Turkey and apple sandwiches on thick bread. Pasta salad. Grapes. Chocolate-covered pretzels. Sparkling water for me, sweet tea for him, a thermos of something hot for later.

“You made this yourself.”

“I can assemble food.”

“This is more than assembly.”

“I watched a video.”

The image of Detective Conor Slater watching picnic tutorial videos on the internet makes me want to lean closer.

He passes me a plate and settles beside me against the cab. The sun lowers over the fields, amber light catching the edges of the world.

It would be so easy to want this.

The thought arrives whole, and I let it sit there, because refusing to look at a thing doesn’t make it stop existing. A man who plans carefully. A truck bed turned into a warm nest. Hands that packed a picnic and also hold his children. The seductive, terrifying possibility of wanting something that might not, this time, end in punishment.

I take a bite of sandwich before that line of thinking goes any further.

“It’s good.”

“High praise.”

“I’m emotionally unavailable and difficult to impress. Take the win.”

He smiles into his sweet tea.

The temperature drops as the sun lowers. Without comment, Conor pulls out another blanket and drapes it across my lap. He does it without performance, and he doesn’t wait to be thanked.

That might be worse than grand gestures.

“How are the kids?” I ask because I need to drop a bomb into this intimate moment.

It does the trick.

“Romy noticed the missing ring last night.” He sets his plate aside. “So I told them both about the divorce. It went badly.”

I wait. Let him explain or not.

He stares toward the horizon. “I kept it simple. Told them I filed. That their mom’s been gone a long time, and I can’t stay married to someone who left us.”

Left us. Not disappeared. Not gone.

“What did Waylen say?”

“He asked if it meant she wasn’t coming back.” His jaw works. “I told him I didn’t know.”

“That was honest.”

“It felt cruel.”

“Sometimes those are the same thing. Adults spend so much time decorating pain before handing it to children that, by the time it arrives, kids don’t recognize it as the truth.”

He looks at me. “You always talk like that?”

“Only when I want someone to roll their eyes.”

His smile surfaces and fades. “Romy screamed at me. Told me I made Hannah leave.”

A cold thread slides in beneath the warmth.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing useful.” He exhales. “What do you say to that? She’s twelve. She’s furious. She wants someone to blame.”

“Do you blame yourself?”

His silence changes the universe.

“I was her husband,” he says finally. “Of course I do.”

That’s not an answer. Or it’s an answer to a different question than the one I asked.

“Because you missed something?” I press gently.

His fingers curl against his knee. “Because I didn’t stop it.”

“Stop her from leaving?”

He turns slightly, and his guard goes up for the first time all evening. “Yes.”

The word arrives flat.

I don’t push. Not yet. Rushed pressure collapses the very thing you’re trying to open.

“You started with ‘Mom needed a break,’” I say instead. “When you told the kids she was gone. Didn’t you?”

Surprise flickers across his face. “Yeah.”

“Then it became a longer break. Then you weren’t sure. And now they know about the note and the suitcase and the flight.”

His throat moves. “They deserved the truth.”

“Yes.”

“I just wish the truth made sense.”

The sun dips lower, burning orange and pink along the horizon. A breeze moves through the field and drags my hair across my face. I try to tuck it back and it catches on my lipstick. Dignity loves a public exit.

Conor reaches over and frees the strand.

His fingers stay near my cheek for one long moment before he pulls back and clears his throat. “Movie starts soon.”

“Movie?”

“Drive-in. About twenty minutes from here.”

I watch him watch the sunset.

He planned all this.

The quilt trail for the drive. The truck bed for the talking. The drive-in for after dark, when the talking is done and what’s left is just two people deciding what comes next.

This is either the most romantic first date I’ve ever been on, or the most strategic.

EIGHT

The Swingin’ Midway Drive-In sits at the border of Athens like a relic the rest of the decade forgot to collect. The marquee bulbs appear to have been burning since before either of us was born, but I fall in love with the place immediately.

The lot is already half full when Conor pulls in. Families in minivans, couples in trucks and a station wagon of teenagers who are definitely not here for the movie.

Conor backs into a spot and unloads another round of blankets from behind the seat—this man has prepared for every weather condition short of biblical flood—and the care and attention he’s taken to ensure this evening is memorable makes me almost forget to wonder if he’d done something similar for his wife.

“Ah-ha.” A fresh strand of string lights appears from beneath his seat, and he holds them up for my inspection before flipping the switch. The tiny bulbs wink to life. He seems very pleased with himself. “I knew I had a backup to the backup somewhere.”

“Were you a Boy Scout, by chance?”

He grins. “Maybe.” He takes a single step toward me, and the smile turns serious. Heat moves through his eyes before he steps back, running a hand through his hair, his embarrassed smile giving him a boyish quality that does nothing useful for my concentration. “Or maybe I’m just a man who wanted to make tonight really special for a woman who’s changing his world.”

He’s good. I have to give him that. But is this hesitation an act? A performance of chivalry? Is this how he pulls women into his orbit? The careful step forward, the strategic retreat, the heat in his eyes that seems so genuine?

The smartest predators understand anticipation.

Two can play that game.

Trying not to appear too eager, I mirror his actions and take a single step closer. Equally bashful, I look up at him through my lashes. The art of seduction doesn’t come naturally to me, and I can only hope I’m doing it right. “You already have.”

He reaches for me, seems to reconsider, and drops his hand.

Disappointment comes in a flood. I’ve been circling this man for months, helping him with his caseload, being a steady presence through his frustration, making him laugh and think and want. I’ve inserted myself into his mind carefully enough that this moment should be inevitable.

When he stands frozen in place, I close the distance and tilt my face, making the invitation clear. And jolt when the dog in the neighboring car barks three feet from my left.

My startle reflex fires before my brain can intervene. I drop into the guard stance my old jiu-jitsu trainer drilled into me until it became involuntary—knees bent, center of gravity lowered, hands up between me and the threat.

The “threat” is a chocolate lab with a goofy grin and a big pink tongue lolling over the door.

“Whoa.” Conor lets out a low whistle. “Remind me never to steal your popcorn. You some kind of Krav Maga ninja, or were you a Girl Scout with a black belt?”

Heat rushes to my cheeks as I straighten and push my hair back like that was all perfectly normal. “Just…took a few classes.”

The lab’s owner calls an apology from the next car over. We both laugh, the tension between us snapping like an overstretched rubber band. Conor shakes his head, still watching me like he’s recalibrating what he thought he knew.

“Noted.” He raises his hands, all innocence. “Do not sneak up on Doctor Jo.”

To my relief, the loudspeakers crackle, and the pre-show ads fade. The screen fills with grainy countdown numbers and dancing popcorn buckets, light washing over the rows of cars.

Conor finishes arranging the blankets and helps me back into the truck bed. He doesn’t let go of my hand quite as quickly as before.

More progress.

The world narrows to the glow of the screen, crickets beginning their evening chorus and the warmth of his shoulder against mine.

By the time the studio logo rolls across the sky, my pulse has mostly settled.

Fresh popcorn drifts from the concession stand and my mouth waters despite the picnic. Conor produces a bag from the cab along with two Thermoses and a box of powdered donuts.

“Thirsty?” I tease.

He shakes one of the Thermoses. “Wasn’t sure if you’d prefer hot cider or hot chocolate, so I brought both.”

“That’s thoughtful.” I nod to the donuts. “But only one variety of donut?”

His mouth opens in fake offense. “Excuse me, but if you don’t like powdered donuts then we can’t be friends.”

I want much, much more from you than that.

Reaching for the box, I take one and resist the urge to tap some of the excess sugar off as a new plan pops into my mind.

He takes one too, and we tap them together, smiling at our synchronicity. “Cheers.”

Sugar explodes down my chin and shirt front exactly as predicted, because physics and powdered sugar is consistent if nothing else. Also exactly as predicted, Conor brushes the sugar from my jaw with his thumb. His hand stays near my face half a second longer than the task requires, and I tip my chin up in invitation.

At the exact right moment, I lick my lower lip and watch his pupils dilate. Something deeply female writhes inside me as his gaze falls to my mouth.

“Damn, you’re the one who’s dangerous,” he growls as he closes the gap.

He has no idea.

This kiss is warm and unhurried, the pressure exactly right. His hand curves along my jaw, and I grip his arm for balance because my vestibular system has apparently forgotten how kissing works.

Trumpets detonate through the lot speakers, and we break apart in the chaos of it. Laughter ripples from nearby cars. The lab barks again, still deeply invested in the evening’s proceedings.

Conor presses his forehead to mine.

Neither of us speaks.

His thumb moves along my cheekbone as the screen fills with the opening frames of Rear Window.

With a long sigh, he leans back against the cab and pulls me into his side, and some of the day’s tension eases its grip. His arm settles around my shoulders, the blanket across both of us, the string lights making small gold pools along the truck bed rails.

The blinds rise to slow, brassy music, and a courtyard blooms into view, all brick and windows and tiny borrowed lives. A woman leans out to shake a rug. A man wipes sweat from his neck in the heat. Someone’s radio carries a song I don’t recognize. People move in boxes of light, unaware they’re being watched.

It’s a little like peering straight into other people’s bedrooms from the dark. Like we’re not supposed to see this. And yet we can’t look away.

The camera drifts back into an apartment. A man in a wheelchair, a leg swallowed in plaster, a broken camera, frozen explosions of light on the walls. Clues to who he is scattered like breadcrumbs, without using a single word.

Conor’s body is warm against mine, his lips still a ghost on my mouth. The film pulls my focus outward, away from the thrum in my chest and into that little world across the courtyard. Safer, for the moment, to spy on someone else’s desire than sit with my own.

Conor’s phone lights up the first time around forty minutes in. He checks it, types something brief, sets it face down.

“Everything okay?”

“My mom.” His thumb rubs lazy circles on my arm. “Romy’s having a hard night.”

Ten minutes later the phone lights again. He reads it. The arm around my shoulders doesn’t move but there’s a subtle shift in the quality of his attention. A man trying to be in two places at once.

On screen, nobody believes Jefferies. He’s seen something real and the world keeps finding reasons to look away.

I get that.

The third text changes Conor’s posture entirely. A muttered curse follows.

I lean away, to get a clearer view of him. “You okay?”

Dropping the phone on his lap, he runs a hand down his face. “My dad let it slip that I’m on a date tonight.”

Uh oh.

“And I’m guessing Romy didn’t take it well.”

I think about being twelve and having the ground rearranged without warning. Old enough to understand that change is coming, too young to have the independence to survive it. The misery of that age, of wanting someone to blame and finding plenty of candidates. Sitting on a bedroom floor as the world outside keeps moving while yours is threatened by a black hole.

Some feelings are so old they live in the body instead of the memory.

“She won’t come out of her room.” Conor stares at the screen, his jaw tight. “My mom’s been outside her door for over an hour.”

Poor kid.

The arm around my shoulders goes rigid, and the warmth of the evening rolls back like a tide. Anger rolls off him, and I start to pull away.

Which is when I see it.

He catches himself. I watch his fist release finger by finger, his jaw deliberately unclenching, the breath drawn in through his nose and released slowly. The warmth returns to his face like a light being turned back on. By the time he looks at me, he’s composed. Present. Concerned-father warm.

The whole thing takes maybe four seconds.

A re-masking.

But which of the masks is fake? And which is real?

A man who loves his children isn’t automatically innocent of other things. Attachment and darkness aren’t mutually exclusive. The dark triad of narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy doesn’t announce itself the way people expect. Some researchers have proposed adding sadism, making it a tetrad. I’ve sat across from men who qualified for every point. Their eyes stop asking whether you believe them and start calculating what you’ll tolerate.

Four seconds of stillness isn’t a diagnosis, though.

It isn’t an acquittal either.

The truth is that a man getting texts about his grieving daughter has every reason to clench his fists and jaw. Context matters. Baseline matters. One moment in a truck bed at a drive-in doesn’t tell me what I need to know. The only way to know is to get closer. Stay longer. Watch what repeats.

If a twelve-year-old with her mother’s face and her father’s instincts doesn’t burn the whole thing down first.

The thought arrives with edges I’m not proud of, something small and ugly that I recognize immediately and don’t entirely succeed in dismissing. Romy is a child. A grieving child. A child who deserves patience and steadiness and someone who won’t flinch when she pushes back.

I know all that.

I also know she’s currently sulking in a bedroom, making this considerably more complicated than it needs to be.

Both are true, and neither cast me in a flattering light.

“Go get them.”

He looks at me. “The double feature hasn’t⁠—”

“Conor.” I start folding the top blanket. “Go.”

“You’re not angry.”

“Of course not.” I hand him the blanket and start folding the next. “Your daughter needs you. That’s not a complicated equation.”

Emotion moves across his face—concern, relief, gratitude—before he presses it back down. “This isn’t how I wanted tonight to end.”

Me either.

I squeeze his hand. “Call me later if you want. After they’re settled. I’m a professional listener. It seems wasteful not to use the skill.”

That earns a tired half-smile. “Thanks for understanding.”

The drive back to my car passes in near silence, broken only by the repeated buzz of his phone. His hands are so tight on his steering wheel I’m surprised he doesn’t break it off.

He pulls in beside my Lexus and cuts the engine.

The cab holds the warmth of the evening around us. Powdered donuts and October air and everything I refuse to name because naming it gives it mass and mass makes it harder to manage.

Conor leans halfway across the console. “Tonight was⁠—”

His phone rings.

We both look at it. His mother’s name on the screen.

He closes his eyes. Opens them. “I have to⁠—”

“I completely understand. Go.” I’m already reaching for the door handle.

He answers the call and holds up one finger—one second—and reaches for my hand.

I give it to him.

He shakes it.

We both look at our joined hands.

A handshake. The man has just kissed me in a truck bed under string lights at a drive-in, and he’s shaking my hand while his mother talks in his ear about his daughter who won’t leave her room.

I nearly laugh. “Good talk.”

He drops his face into his free hand.

I get out of the truck before either of us can make it worse. I stand beside my car for a moment longer than I need to, in the cool Athens dark, in my good boots and pretty scarf.

He waves as he pulls away. I wave back.

The drive home is less than forty minutes.

I spend the first ten finding the handshake genuinely funny. The next ten admitting it was also the most honest beat of the entire evening. Two people on the cusp of changing everything, interrupted by the life that was already there before I arrived.

The last twenty, I spend thinking about Romy.

Sitting on her bedroom floor while her grandmother talks through the door. Understanding, in the wordless way a child understands, that her father’s absence tonight means the world is shifting again and nobody asked her.

I know that feeling from the inside. I also know I’m the thing the world shifts into.

Because it’s what I want.

By the time I pull into my parking space in Cleveland, my phone has a text.

Kids are okay. Romy ignoring me. Waylen fell asleep in the car.

Another text arrives as I’m reading.

Tonight was amazing. The handshake was not my finest moment.

I sit in the dark car and consider my answer.

I’ve had worse goodnight handshakes. The bar is underground.

His reply comes in under a minute.

I’ll make it up to you next time.

I set the phone in my lap and look at the windshield.

Next time.

The wanting arrives without a sound, and I let it exist for exactly as long as it takes to identify it correctly. Then I open the car door, and the cool air comes in and I step out into it.

Useful, I tell myself.

This is all extremely useful.

NINE

River Valley always feels colder on Mondays.

The thermostat battles Tennessee humidity year-round with the enthusiasm of a dying soldier, so it’s not temperature. Mondays are their own kind of punishment. Reduced staffing, disrupted routines, too much medication, too little sleep and patients unraveling while everyone documents otherwise in their progress notes.

By eight thirty, the nurses’ station buzzes with controlled chaos. A patient in Ward C smeared toothpaste across her roommate’s pillow because God told her the woman was poisonous. Someone flooded a bathroom overnight. Two orderlies argue in low voices over missing restraints while Denise hunts for a chart she swears existed thirty seconds ago.

Normal Monday soundtrack.

I balance coffee and my tablet while scanning the morning group attendance list.

Amanda Baker—Absent.

Cathy Davis—Absent.

Again.

Denise notices my expression before I open my mouth. “Don’t start.”

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You made a face.”

“I have one naturally.”

“You have several naturally.”

I set my coffee beside the terminal. “Why are they both absent?” As if I don’t already know.

“Cathy flipped out again around three.” Denise signs off on a medication entry without looking up. “Amanda got caught in the fallout.”

“How bad?”

“Depends who you ask.” Which means restraints happened.

“Still sedated?”

“Technically breathing.” Denise lowers her voice. “Cathy kept screaming that Dr. Holloway stole her husband.”

“Stole her husband?”

Denise rolls her eyes. “Last week she thought he was poisoning her. This week he stole her husband.”

Delusions often mutate emotionally before they mutate logically. The content shifts, but the core wound stays the same.

Mark Holloway steps into the nurses’ station, a folder tucked under one arm.

“Speak of the devil,” Denise mutters.

Mark chuckles. “I certainly hope not.” His gaze moves to me. “Dr. Adair. You’ve been difficult to track down.”

“Should I apologize or feel important?”

“That depends.” The pleasantness in his voice has just enough pressure beneath it to register. “I noticed you scheduled individual sessions with all the women in your group.”

“I did.”

He waits for an explanation. I sip my coffee.

“I wasn’t aware they’d be transitioning to your caseload.”

“They aren’t. I inherited the women’s group a few days ago. It seemed reasonable to spend individual time with each of them before I run group.”

“They’re complicated patients.”

My ovaries file a formal complaint on behalf of all women. Does he think I’m oblivious? “All patients are complicated.”

One corner of his mouth lifts. Fair point conceded. He doesn’t move.

“Cathy in particular can be manipulative.” He taps his pen on his folder. “She tends to absorb the emotional dynamics around her and reshape them. Something to be aware of.”

What’s his exact warning? Be careful. Stay away. Don’t believe anything she tells you.

“I’m a forensic psychiatrist, Mark. Manipulation isn’t a new experience.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

His expression flickers too fast to follow. Fatigue, maybe. Genuine concern. Professional protectiveness. Something else entirely.

“Some patients rewrite reality”—he shrugs—“because they genuinely can’t survive the original version.”

I understand that mechanism better than most.

“Thanks for the context.” I’m proud of myself for not adding mansplaining.

He takes the hint and leaves.

Cathy’s room is near the end of the hall. I knock and step inside.

She lies curled beneath her blanket facing the door, dark hair tangled across the pillow. Her breakfast tray sits untouched. The pale sage walls hold the gray morning light leaking through institutional blinds.

“Cathy.”

Her eyes open. She locks onto me with startling intensity, afraid first, then confused, then something stranger.

“You came back.” Her voice drags through the sedation.

“I told you I would.”

She studies me for a long moment. I pull the chair close and sit. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“They drugged me hard.”

“Do you know why?”

Her gaze drifts toward the ceiling. “Because he gets scared when I remember things.”

“Who does?”

She frowns at me like I’m slow. “My husband.”

“What’s your husband’s name?”

“Mark.” She licks her dry lips. “He used to be.”

“Mark Holloway is your husband?”

“He used to be.” Cathy picks at the blanket. “She changed that.”

“Who changed it?”

“The other one.”

“Can you tell me her name?”

“She has many names.” The words come barely above a whisper. “She takes my things.”

“What things?”

“My room.” Her breathing quickens. “My babies.”

“You have children?”

“I had babies.” The present tense swallows itself into past. “Isaiah. Chelsea. Jeremy. Gabby.” She covers her face with her hands. “She wouldn’t stop touching them.”

“Who wouldn’t?”

Cathy’s eyes snap to mine. “Cara.”

“Who’s Cara?”

“She kills babies.” The words arrive with absolute certainty, quiet and terrible. “She said bad things happen when Cara gets jealous.”

“Who said⁠—?”

“She killed them all,” Cathy whispers. “And then she took everything else.”

I lower my voice. “Tell me about your children.”

“Samby the Manby.” A small, heartbroken smile crosses her face. “He forgot me. He calls her Mom now.”

The grief in those words sits too raw to be constructed.

“Who does?”

“Everybody.” Her voice cracks. “Everybody lies here.”

I glance at the medication chart. Haldol. Ativan. Seroquel. Enough to keep a person’s thoughts from completing themselves, let alone building a coherent narrative.

Cathy stares at me. “You know.” Dangerously calm. “You know what she did.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“She took my life.” A long silence. Down the hall, someone screams about spiders. Monday, unrelenting. “She took my life and blamed me.”

I stay with that.

“You should rest,” I tell her.

Her eyes drift half shut. “She’ll take yours too.”

I stand and pull the blanket higher over her shoulder. At the door, I pause to finish my notes.

“That’s not her life.” The words come from behind me, barely audible, her face already turned toward the wall. “That’s not her life.”

I leave the room with more questions than I arrived with and absolutely no desire to examine how deeply the session has unsettled me.

The truly dangerous patients aren’t always the loudest ones. Sometimes they’re the ones mourning lives no one else believes ever existed.

I’m halfway down the women’s hall when the first crash comes from Amanda Baker’s room.

Metal against wall. Hard enough to stop every conversation in the corridor at once.

A scream follows. Fear or rage or pain, I can’t tell. Denise curses from the nurses’ station. Two techs rush past with grim efficiency.

Amanda’s door is open when I reach it.

Breakfast is everywhere. Scrambled eggs smeared across the wall. Plastic cup overturned, orange juice spreading beneath the bed. Chair tipped sideways. Sheets ripped from the mattress. The narrow mirror above the sink cracked through the middle, safety glass spiderwebbed but holding.

Amanda hurls herself against the wall. A tech grips one arm. Another tries to catch her from behind.

This isn’t the hollow, sedated woman from last week. This Amanda is all bone and fury and electrical current.

“Let me out. Let me out. Let me out.”

Denise appears with a syringe already in hand. Haldol, probably. A chemical curtain coming down before anyone asks what’s behind it.

“No.”

Denise’s gaze snaps to me. “Dr. Adair, she’s⁠—”

“I can see that. Give me five minutes.”

Denise stares at me as if I’ve suggested we cure psychosis with interpretive dance.

“She’s verbal. She’s oriented enough to demand escape. She’s showing spontaneous recall under activation.” This woman is finally awake, and I need to talk to her. “I want to assess her before we snow her again.”

Amanda’s gaze jerks toward me. For one bare second, her fury stops moving. A terrible little pressure opens behind my ribs.

“She’s destroyed her room.”

“And now she’s looking at me.”

Denise scoffs. “That’s supposed to be reassuring?”

“It’s supposed to make you trust my judgment.”

The tech closest to Amanda shifts his grip. “Doctor?”

I nod toward the door. “Step out.”

Amanda bares her teeth at him. “Let me go, or I’ll bite your thumb off.”

He looks at me.

“Amanda.” I wait until she’s focused on me. “You have two choices. Calm down and talk to me, or you’ll be sedated. Which will it be?”

Her nostrils flare. A long breath in. Her mouth drops open on the exhale. The tension in her shoulders softens one small degree at a time until she’s no longer fighting. “We can talk.”

The other three mental health professionals in the room don’t look relieved.

“Slowly.” I nod to the door. “Everyone move slowly.”

The techs release her and back toward the door. Amanda presses against the wall beside the broken mirror, chest heaving, both hands tangled in her hair. A clump has already come loose in her left fist.

Poor creature. The thought comes automatically, and I hate it a little. Pity is dangerous in a place like this.

Denise stays outside the door with the syringe.

“Hi, Amanda.”

Her laugh comes out cracked. “That’s not my name.”

“Okay.” I stay near the door. Close enough to hold her attention, far enough to give her room. “What name should I use?”

Her fingers tighten in her hair until her knuckles whiten. “I don’t know, but they keep saying I’m her.”

The admission slices through the rage.

I take one slow step sideways, not toward her but around the edge of the room. She mirrors me. We orbit the ruined tray, the overturned chair, the cracked mirror.

“What happened before you got upset?”

“I woke up.”

“That’s all?”

Her mouth twists. “You think that’s funny?” She yanks at her hair. A patch of it comes loose with a soft ripping sound that turns my stomach. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

The hatred in her face has so much grief underneath it that I almost step back. “No. I don’t believe in that word.”

Something in her expression shifts. “Blank places.” She stares at the dark strands in her fist. “Everything skips. I reach for something and it’s gone. I know it’s supposed to be there. But there’s nothing.”

“What’s supposed to be there?”

“My arms are empty.” The words are barely sound. She lifts her forearms, staring at them. “They hurt. They’re full of holes. Something goes there. Something fits there. I wake up holding nothing and I know I lost it, but I don’t know what it is.”

My throat tightens.

Damn her. Damn this room.

I take a careful step, keeping the overturned chair between us. “I lost a baby before I could hold it.”

Amanda goes still. The hallway outside seems to disappear.

Too much self-disclosure. Too personal. Too useful. My supervisors would’ve had opinions. My mother would’ve had worse ones.

Tears burn my eyes. “My arms were empty too.”

Her face crumples around something younger. Younger than Amanda Baker. Younger than the grief she can’t name.

“I wake up reaching.” She rubs her arms hard enough to redden the skin, the hair still trapped in her fist. “I wake up and I’m reaching, and they tell me stop, stop, stop, Amanda, go back to sleep. But I’m not Amanda when I’m asleep.”

“Who are you when you’re asleep?”

She leans closer to the mirror, as if proximity can repair what the glass refuses to fix. “I used to be beautiful.”

“I believe you.”

“Men looked at me.” Her voice trembles. “Women hated me. Girls wanted to be me. My hair was long. She cut it.”

“Who cut it?”

“The ugly one.”

Her gaze slides to me in the mirror. For one awful second, the cracked glass holds us together—her ruined reflection, my composed one. Her wild hair, my neat knot. Her hospital scrubs, my fitted black pants and cream sweater beneath my white coat.

Her breathing changes. The air goes cold.

“You’re beautiful.”

My pulse slows rather than quickens. That can happen in dangerous moments.

“Thank you.”

Amanda turns from the mirror. “You think you’re better.”

“What babies, Amanda?”

She flinches. “My arms are empty.”

“What were their names?”

She presses the hair against her chest like it’s precious. “I don’t know.”

I attempt a different direction. “Tell me about the ugly one?”

“Fatty Annie.” Amanda’s face contorts. “She was annoying. Always there. Always watching. Always wanting.” Her voice climbs. “She wanted my clothes. My friends. My room. My life.”

“Or did she want you to love her?”

Amanda’s mouth opens. No sound comes out.

Too far. I know it before she reacts.

Her face twists into something pure and clean and hateful. “You.”

An accusation without object.

“What about me?”

“You took it.”

“What did I take?”

She hurls the clump of hair at me. It hits my chest and falls against my shoe. For half a second, we stare at each other.

Amanda’s laugh breaks apart into a sob. “Give it back.” She grabs another fistful from the side of her head and tears. This time the skin beneath shows red. “Give it back. Give it back. Give it back.”

The door opens. Denise appears. “We’re done.”

Amanda looks from Denise to me, and something in that ruined mind makes a decision.

She lunges.

One second, she’s by the sink. The next, she goes for my hair. Fingers dig hard at the roots, twisting, pulling me forward with surprising force. Pain flashes white-hot across my scalp.

“I want it.” Her mouth is close to my face, breath sour with medication and panic. “I want it all back.”

Training saves me before thought does. I pivot with the pull, step inside her reach, trap her wrist against my shoulder. My other arm hooks beneath hers. A control hold, ugly and effective.

Amanda shrieks. “Give it back.”

Her nails rake across my cheek. Heat opens beneath my eye.

Techs flood the room.

“You still get to be beautiful.” Her voice shatters.

Denise catches her upper arm. Amanda twists with the strength of someone whose body has decided survival requires impossible things. Her elbow drives into my ribs. Air leaves me in a hard burst.

A tech grabs her from behind. I release the hold and step back.

Amanda fights them with everything she has. “Please.” The word tears out of her. “Please, please, please, I don’t know where they are.”

The syringe goes into her thigh.

Amanda screams. The sound follows me backward until my spine meets the wall.

Denise and the techs ease her onto the mattress while she thrashes weakly, still crying, still clutching at the empty air.

“My arms.” Her words slur almost immediately. “My arms hurt.”

“I know.” Denise strokes her hair. “Honey, I know.”

Amanda’s gaze rolls toward me. For one second it is clear enough to be unbearable.

“You’re mean.”

A child’s word. Small and precisely aimed.

Her eyelids flutter. The fight drains from her body in degrees, and the techs keep their hands on her until the drug pulls her under, because nobody in this building trusts peace when it arrives too quickly.

I stand against the wall with my scalp throbbing, my cheek burning and Amanda’s hair stuck to the toe of my shoe.

I don’t move. I just stand there wondering whether I helped her or used her.

Or both.

TEN

By late afternoon, the scratch on my cheek has swallowed any hope of going unnoticed.

River Valley employees try—and fail—not to stare at it. I finish dictation on Amanda’s incident report, close the chart and I’m still sitting there when a knock sounds at my office door.

Blake Graves leans against the frame like he belongs there. Which, unfortunately for my nervous system, he almost does.

Tall. Dark suit, tie loosened beneath the jacket. Intelligent blue eyes that miss very little and apologize for nothing. I’ve worked with him on over a dozen cases since moving to River Valley. He notices everything, which is what makes him good at his job and what makes him dangerous company for women trying to maintain emotional compartmentalization.

His gaze zeros in on my cheek. “Looks like your day’s going great.”

“You should see the other guy.”

“Psych patient?”

“Excellent deduction.”

“I’m with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations.” He winks. “We’re basically psychic.”

“Sure. That’s definitely the explanation.”

He steps fully into the office and closes the door. “I was interviewing a patient connected to an assault case. Thought I’d say hi before heading out.”

“I’m glad you did.”

It’s true. Blake is a very smart man. Confiding in him is a smart move.

He studies my face. “Who scratched you?”

“HIPAA remains a functioning law.” I brush my fingers beneath my eye. “It’s not the worst thing that’s happened to me lately.”

The moment the words leave my mouth, I know what I’ve done.

Blake picks up on it immediately. “Lately?”

Too late to retreat naturally. And I find I don’t want to.

I pull the scarf down, exposing the bruises starting to fade along my throat.

His expression changes. “Jo.”

“I’m fine.”

“Who did that?”

“A patient.”

“Bullshit.”

“Okay, a prisoner patient.” A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “But I appreciate your confidence in my dating choices.”

He steps closer. His fingers brush beneath my jaw, careful near the bruising. Men who spend enough time around violence develop the habit of checking for damage, and Blake has spent a great deal of time around violence.

The warmth that moves through me is inconvenient and real. There’s a version of this moment I could lean into. A TBI agent quietly invested in my well-being wouldn’t be the worst thing to have in my corner right now, and I understand that clearly. I also understand that he’s looking at me the way a man looks when he’s already decided something, and what he’s decided has nothing to do with evidence.

I think, briefly and against my will, about what it would have been like to meet him before any of this. Before I’d already pointed my life in a direction I can’t unmake.

The thought arrives with an ache.

“You should’ve called me.”

“It wasn’t a criminal issue.”

“That should never stop you.”

Fair point. I lift the scarf back into place. “The patient’s in custody.”

He studies me another second. “You attract weird situations.”

“You investigate weird situations.”

“Yeah, but I signed up for mine.”

“That implies I didn’t.”

His laugh softens the room. God help me, I genuinely like him. Which could become a problem eventually.

Blake drops into the chair across from my desk. “You okay otherwise?”

I study him. In my line of work, I understand the law, but not as well as this man does. “Can I ask you something?”

He settles back. “Go ahead.”

“I have a friend.” I’m not ready to name names quite yet. “A detective. His wife went missing about a year ago. Note, packed suitcase, airport footage of a woman matching her description boarding an international flight.” I lift a shoulder. “I’ve been wondering what actually happened to her.”

Blake folds an ankle over his knee. “Conor Slater.”

I really shouldn’t be surprised a TBI agent knows all the gossip. “You know him.”

He shrugs. “It was a big story.”

“Did you investigate the case officially?”

A muscle pops in his jaw. “Nope. The department he works for handled it internally.”

“You don’t seem happy about that.”

“Nope.”

“Did you look into the case personally?”

He narrows his eyes. “Yes. Why do you ask?”

How much of this do I tell him?

Too little sounds suspicious. Too much sounds obsessive. The art of dropping a stone into still water is making sure no one traces the ripple back to your hand.

“I’ve worked a handful of cases with Detective Slater over the past year. Witness prep, behavioral consults, a few strategy meetings with prosecutors.” I open the mini fridge and pull out two bottles of water, handing him one. “He seems like a good man. Smart. Steady. Good with victims. Good with kids.”

Blake opens the bottle and takes a long sip. “But?”

The memory surfaces.

A warm afternoon. Conor leaning against the brick wall, sunlight catching the silver at his temples, asking whether I’d slept yet or was planning to survive entirely on caffeine and professional anxiety.

Then the voice. Female. Sharp enough to cut through traffic noise.

“What did you do to Hannah?”

“We were standing outside the DA’s office when a reporter named Esme Kincaid approached him on the street. Demanding to know what he did with his wife.” I pause. “I thought she was going to hit him.”

Blake shifts. “And?”

“Turned out she was his wife’s best friend.”

“What was Slater’s response?”

That was the strange part. “Nothing. He walked straight into the DA’s office. Esme stood there on the sidewalk with her phone out, recording the whole thing.”

“Some people freeze under accusation.”

“He didn’t freeze.” I choose the next words with care. “He assessed. There’s a difference. He went perfectly still, like he’d practiced a situation like that before.”

Blake says nothing. He understands that silence is cheaper than questions.

“I followed her.”

A long exhale. “Of course you did.”

“You would have too.”

One side of his mouth tips up. “Probably.”

“We ended up having coffee. She told me her side of the story. Said her best friend adored her children. That she wouldn’t vanish overnight without contacting them. Wouldn’t leave without a word.”

“Friends say that all the time.”

“I know.”

“And?”

I meet his gaze. “She said if someone wanted to stage a believable disappearance, a detective would know exactly how to do it.”

The silence between us changes.

Blake rubs his jaw. “One angry friend with a theory isn’t much to go on.”

“I know that too.” I pick at the label on the bottle. “I spent three years on my dissertation studying authority-based personality masking. How certain offenders learn to weaponize public trust. How they construct identities that make accusation feel absurd to everyone around them.”

“And?”

I glance at the three-inch binder on my shelf. “Cops feature prominently in the literature.”

Blake says nothing for long enough that I wonder if I’ve miscalculated. He’s a cop too, after all.

Then he exhales. “Yeah. They do.”

My chest loosens. Just slightly.

“Do wives actually leave that often?”

Blake shrugs. “People disappear voluntarily every day. Affairs. Debt. Mental health. Reinventing themselves. Most cases resolve quickly.”

“Which makes Hannah look exactly like every other missing adult.”

He strokes his jaw, studying me. “But you’re wondering if Hannah Slater really got on that plane?”

“Yes.” I’m careful how I form the next question. “Can you share what you know about the case?”

He studies me for so long I’m not sure he’ll answer. “The police department handling Hannah Slater’s disappearance internally bothered me right away. Cases involving law enforcement family members should automatically go to an outside agency.”

“They had airport footage.”

“They had footage of a woman in a baseball cap walking through the Atlanta airport.” His gaze sharpens. “That’s not the same thing.”

He’s talking about confirmation bias. The tendency to interpret new information as evidence for what we already believe. Dangerous because it feels exactly like good investigative work.

I think about what I know about airport security. About how people see what they expect to see. About TSA employees moving thousands of grumpy people through lines without conducting identity verification. “How reliable is that footage, really?”

“Less reliable than television wants people to believe. I recently worked a case where a man boarded a flight to Mexico under his buddy’s ID. Took us three weeks to figure out the wrong person had technically left the country.”

“What caught it?”

“One TSA supervisor thought the ears looked wrong.”

“Anatomy is weird.”

“Very.”

I cross my arms. “Anything else you learned?”

“Honestly, I understand why people accept the conclusion so fast. Adult woman disappears. Marriage under strain. Evidence suggesting she left voluntarily.” He scratches his cheek. “But there are things that don’t sit right.”

My pulse ticks harder. “What things?”

“There was a domestic disturbance call three years earlier.”

I can’t keep the surprise off my face. “What kind of disturbance?”

“A neighbor called 911 from the house around midnight, reporting screaming from the Slater residence.” Blake watches my face closely. “Official reports state the wife trips on a child’s toy and fell down the stairs. No charges. No follow-up.”

My brain moves toward explanation. One fight doesn’t mean abuse. One call doesn’t mean violence. Marriages implode loudly all the time. I know this. I’ve testified to it.

Lived it.

Blake keeps talking before I can finish building the defense. “There was also a legal separation filing that same year.”

The room grows too warm.

“Filed by Hannah.” He crinkles the plastic bottle. “Withdrawn thirteen days later.”

Conor told me they struggled like most couples. He never mentioned separation paperwork. He never mentioned a 911 call.

He never mentioned a lot of things.

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

“I know.”

Which is worse than if Blake argued.

He takes another long sip. “Point is, if someone wanted to stage a convincing disappearance and knew how investigations work, knew which details people trust and which ones get waved through⁠—”

“A detective would know,” I finish for him.

“A detective would know exactly.” Blake finishes the last of the water. “Look, Jo. I’m not saying that Conor Slater murdered his wife or is responsible for her disappearance.” He props his elbows on his knees. “I’m telling you a lot of people worked very hard to accept the easiest explanation very quickly.”

I know the research on this. I’ve spent years studying how institutional trust insulates dangerous men—how a badge and a reputation and a community’s need to believe in its own protectors can close a door that should stay open. I wrote about it. I presented it at three conferences. I can recite the literature from memory.

Blake pushes to his feet. “Most people take their concerns to the police.”

I take the bottle from his hand and walk him to the door. “Most people aren’t forensic psychiatrists who’ve spent a decade watching the police build the wrong narrative.”

Recognition moves across his expression. Or maybe it’s recalibration.

He rests his hand on the door knob but doesn’t turn. “How close a friend is Conor Slater to you?”

I’ve been waiting for the question. “Close.”

He glances away. “Got it.” He opens the door. “Be careful.”

As his footsteps fade, I sit back down at my desk and open the second drawer. The slim notebook is exactly where I left it. I open it to the next fresh page and write the date.

BG approached. Initial contact established. Receptive. Suspicious of narrative gaps. Moving carefully.

I close the notebook and return it to its hiding place.

“Be careful.”

Blake has no idea how careful I have to be.

ELEVEN

I’ve been kissing Conor Slater for six weeks, and somewhere during that time, careful stopped being part of the equation.

The first few times he touched me, there’d been restraint in it. Controlled caution. Patience too. I don’t think he was concerned about pushing me too fast. At least not entirely.

I could tell he was much more worried about the kids. His parents. His co-workers and friends. So we kept our relationship out of Sweetwater. We either met somewhere in the middle, or he came to Chattanooga or Cleveland.

“I don’t want us to become another story people whisper about over their morning coffee,” he told me once.

I understood. I could be patient too.

After all, he wasn’t single, nor was he divorced. He also wasn’t widowed, at least according to him.

Though I very much wanted in his home, I settled for being inside his head.

For now.

I’m halfway through reviewing discharge notes when my phone lights up again.

Conor.

I smile before I can stop myself. That’s becoming a problem I can’t control.

We’d already spent forty minutes on the phone earlier while I soaked in a bathtub hot enough to peel skin from bone. He’d talked me through an argument with administration over staffing shortages while I pretended not to enjoy the sound of his voice quite so much.

The text appears beneath our earlier messages.

Open your door.

I frown. Another message arrives immediately after.

Please.

Pulse picking up speed, I cross the townhouse barefoot, tightening the belt of my robe as I go. My hair’s still damp from the bath, twisted into a loose knot that’s already slipping apart. The porch light spills through the frosted glass beside the door, outlining the broad shape of him standing outside.

Conor has never come by unannounced.

Which means something’s wrong.

I open the door.

Conor steps inside and kicks the door shut behind him. Before I can say a word, his hands close around my waist and he backs me against the wall hard enough to rattle the framed print hanging nearby.

His mouth finds mine.

Not the slow, deliberate kisses I’ve grown used to over the past six weeks. This feels starved. Wound too tight. Like he’s been holding something back for so long that the restraint finally snapped under its own weight.

My fingers fist in the front of his jacket before I consciously decide to touch him.

Cold clings to his clothes. His hands slide into my damp hair, knocking loose strands free from the knot at the back of my head while he kisses me hard enough to steal the air from my lungs.

He stops with a low growl.

Not completely. His forehead stays pressed against mine. One hand still grips my hip. But he pulls back just enough for breath to exist between us again.

“I’m sorry.” The words come rough. Frayed around the edges. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

My pulse crashes against the inside of my throat. “Conor⁠—”

“The judge signed the order.” His eyes search mine like he’s trying to decide whether he’s already crossed too many lines to stop now. “Publication starts Wednesday.”

Neither of us speaks.

I know exactly what that means. Four weeks in the local newspaper. Four weeks giving Hannah the opportunity to respond before the court moves toward default. The legal beginning of the end.

Conor exhales sharply and glances away before looking back. “I told myself I was going to wait until the divorce was final.” His thumb drags across my lip. “I respect you too much to let people accuse you of sleeping with a married man.”

He means it. Or he wants me to believe he does. The terrible thing is I can’t tell, and I’m not sure anymore which possibility frightens me more.

Occupational hazard. I no longer know which instincts belong to me and which belong to the job.

“I was fine waiting,” I manage.

“I know.” A humorless laugh leaves him. “That’s part of the problem.”

Rainwater drips from his hair onto the hardwood floor. “When we got off the phone, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. In that bathtub. Smelling like heaven. Hair wet.”

Heat creeps slowly up my throat because every word is right.

“I tried to stop thinking about how your skin would feel.” His voice deepens. “How it would taste. I couldn’t stop. Can’t.”

The confession is like surrender.

Conor steps back another inch, giving me enough space that I could easily move away from him if I wanted to. His hands hang at his sides.

“Tell me to go.”

The words settle between us.

My heart pounds so hard I feel it everywhere.

I’ve been waiting for this moment for months. Planning for it. Dreaming of it. It’s exactly what I wanted.

Yet, I hesitate.

He’s still a married man. A married man with children. Children grieving a lost mother. A lost mother who⁠—

“Jo.” He takes another step back, hurt and confusion at war across his features.

I should tell him to leave. For so many reasons.

I don’t. I tug the belt of my robe instead.

Hunger and relief shift in his expression. Something darker underneath both.

Before I can read him, his hands are on me again.

One arm hooks beneath my knees before I can react, the other wrapping around my back as he lifts me against his chest. A startled laugh escapes me, breathless and shaky.

Conor kisses me once more while carrying me down the hall like he already knows exactly where my bedroom is.

The dual lamps throw amber light across my room while rain taps steadily against the windows. November in Tennessee. Damp air. Wet streets.

Rain seems to be a recurring theme between us.

Being with Conor isn’t what I expect. The carefulness is gone.

This Conor is rough. Possessive. Hungry.

Heat spirals through me so fast it’s humiliating.

I work with violent offenders for a living. I know the difference between fear and arousal. I know how thin the line between them can become inside the body.

But there’s nothing confusing about this.

He wants me.

And I want this.

His forehead presses against mine, both of us breathing hard. “Tell me if I push too far.”

Tears burn my eyes.

Because he asked. Because Martin Moore wouldn’t have asked. Because predators who enjoy fear don’t usually stop to check whether the woman beneath them is still okay.

Unless they’re very good at pretending.

My brain never shuts up.

I kiss him before the thought can fill a hole. “You talk too much.”

A low laugh escapes him, roughened by lust and exhaustion. “You’re encouraging bad behavior.”

“That’s probably unethical.”

“An hour ago, you were still pretending to care about ethics.”

“That’s slander.”

His smile flashes before disappearing again when I shift beneath him. The air changes with it.

God help me, I like this version of him too.

The thought should feel dangerous.

Instead, it’s simply honest.

Lightning flashes outside the windows while Conor sleeps beside me with one arm across my waist. His breathing stays deep and even. Completely relaxed.

I stare at the ceiling.

The publication order starts running this week. Four consecutive Wednesdays in the local paper. Legal notices buried between estate auctions and roofing advertisements. Hannah Slater ordered to respond to divorce proceedings within thirty days of final publication.

Strange how the end of a marriage can look so administrative.

A missing woman reduced to tiny print beside a used tractor listing.

Conor shifts behind me. “You awake?”

“Yes.”

His fingers slide lazily across my stomach. Intimate enough now that neither of us hesitates from touch anymore.

Dangerous thing, familiarity.

“She won’t respond.”

For a second, I wonder if he can read my mind.

I know exactly who he means. Hannah exists in every room between us, even when nobody says her name.

“Are you sure?”

He takes so long to answer that I wonder if he’s drifting back to sleep. Then, “If she wanted to come home, she would’ve by now.”

The words settle like weights into the dark.

And because I’m apparently determined to ruin my own life in increasingly creative ways, I ask the question I need answered. “What would you do if she did come home?”

Conor’s hand stills on my stomach.

The silence stretches so long my mind screams at the loudness of it.

His hand moves up to cup my breast, and he huffs a laugh against my hair.

“I’d kill her.”

TWELVE

I’m still sore from sleeping with Conor when the first publication notice appears in the Monroe County Advocate.

It’s been two days since his hands closed around my waist in my doorway. Two days since he told me to make him leave. Two days since he said “I’d kill her” with his mouth against my hair like the words weighed nothing at all.

The notice runs Wednesday morning, buried between an estate auction and an advertisement for half-price brake pads.

IN THE CIRCUIT COURT FOR MONROE COUNTY, TENNESSEE

CONOR JAMES SLATER, Plaintiff,

v.

HANNAH RENEE SLATER, Defendant.

No. 26-DR-1378

ORDER OF PUBLICATION

Hannah Renee Slater, whose last known address is 114 Sycamore Ridge Road, Sweetwater, Tennessee, is hereby notified that a Complaint for Divorce has been filed against you by Conor James Slater in the Circuit Court for Monroe County, Tennessee. You are required to file an answer or otherwise respond to the Complaint within thirty (30) days after the date of the last publication of this notice, or a judgment by default may be taken against you.

Cold and procedural. Hannah Slater reduced to a case number and a response deadline.

I screenshot the page and file it away.

I have a Google alert set on her name. On his too, though I tell myself that’s standard practice. The same way I track names connected to any open case I’ve consulted on. It’s a professional habit. Due diligence. I’ve gotten very good at believing my own explanations.

The alert for Hannah’s name fires Thursday afternoon while I’m halfway through a late lunch at my desk.

Some Women Don’t Disappear Willingly

By Esme Kincaid

I almost sprain my finger tapping too fast.

The article begins gently, which is smart on Esme’s part. It talks about what a wonderful person Hannah Slater is. Her kindness and generosity. The fact that she’s been gone for sixteen months.

Sixteen months of birthdays she hasn’t called for. Sixteen months of her daughter growing into a young woman with no one to button the back of her dress or talk her through the cruelty of turning thirteen. Sixteen months of her son kissing her photograph goodnight because no one has been able to explain to him why she doesn’t call.

Those of us who love her have felt every single minute of those days.

From there, Esme pivots. She writes about missing women in rural counties—the statistics, the patterns, the stories communities construct to make the unbearable feel manageable.

Missing persons cases are complicated. We understand that. We understand that law enforcement operates under constraints, that evidence must meet a legal threshold, that not every disappearance becomes an investigation.

What we struggle to understand is how a case involving a mother of two, a woman with deep roots in this community and no history of instability, was effectively closed on the strength of a handwritten note, a packed suitcase and airport security footage that the public has never been permitted to see.

We are asked to take these things on faith.

We are asked to believe that Hannah Slater—devoted mother, loyal friend, woman who has not missed a single one of her children’s milestones in nearly thirteen years—simply decided one morning to leave them. To board a plane. To vanish.

Our community deserves answers. Not assumptions. Not a narrative assembled behind closed doors and handed to a grieving community as fact. Real answers, arrived at through a real investigation, conducted by people with no personal stake in the outcome.

That last part is vital. It has always been vital.

How far will a department go to protect its own? We hope we never have to find out. We hope that question reads as unfair, as the product of grief rather than evidence. We genuinely do.

But Hannah Slater’s children are still waiting for their mother to come home.

And legal notices now appearing in this publication suggest that some have already decided she won’t.

The implication sits with me long after I’ve stopped reading.

Esme doesn’t accuse him. There’s nothing actionable, nothing a lawyer could touch. What she’s done is more corrosive than accusation. She’s handed every person in Monroe County who already suspects the worst a sentence they can point to. A byline. Permission to say it out loud.

I close my laptop and pick up my phone.

Esme answers on the second ring. “I wondered if you’d call.”

“I read your article.”

“Good.” A sharp exhale. “Someone had to say something.”

“Well, you certainly did.” I choose my words carefully. “Is it possible she just needed a clean break? From everyone?”

“From me?” The laugh that follows holds no humor. “We were sorority sisters. We talked every single week for fifteen years. You don’t ghost your person, Dr. Adair. You don’t leave your babies and ghost your person.”

Esme keeps talking. She describes how Hannah changed. How she became careful about her words, careful about who was in earshot, careful in ways that didn’t used to be Hannah at all. And then she tells me about a photograph. Hannah’s arm. A bruise.

“She said she walked into a cabinet.” The pause that follows is its own kind of sentence. “She said it so fast. Like she’d already decided what she was going to say before I asked.” A long exhale. “This happened before he pushed her down the steps.”

“What?”

Esme snorts. “Well, the official report is that she fell, but I believe he pushed her.”

I chew my nail. “And then she claims she walked into a cabinet?”

Two texts follow. A bruise on Hannah’s skin. A screenshot of a text Hannah sent. The timestamp is 2:03 a.m. on August 1, a week before she disappeared.

I’ve been thinking about leaving for a while now. I just can’t figure out how to do it without losing them. I can’t lose them, Es. I’d rather stay.

A woman who’d rather endure a marriage than lose her children doesn’t board a plane and never look back.

I know that.

I also know that grief makes unreliable witnesses. That best friends canonize the dead. That bruises happen in kitchens and texts sent at two in the morning don’t always mean what they seem to mean in daylight.

“I’m officially not accusing anyone of anything,” Esme says. “I’m just telling you that Romy called me crying Tuesday night.”

The shift is abrupt enough to catch me off guard. “What happened?”

“She said Conor has been seeing some woman and was gone most of Monday night. Then he spent an hour pacing the kitchen Tuesday evening. Wouldn’t sit. Wouldn’t eat.”

I rub my temple. “Did Romy think he was having second thoughts on the divorce?” I hate myself for prying.

“No. She said he’s been acting secretive and weird for a while, but he was ‘acting weirder than normal.’ Her words.”

“Divorce, no matter the circumstances, can cause people to act secretive and weird.”

Esme scoffs. “Don’t you think I know that?” She blows out a short breath. “What I’m saying is that girls who grow up in difficult homes learn to track their fathers’ moods. Romy’s been doing it her whole life. She knew that pacing.”

An image of Conor flashes through my mind. Restless. Jaw tight. Hands flexing at his sides.

My brain, which has never once done me a personal favor, follows that image directly to those same hands against my skin earlier that week.

Even while I’m listening to Esme closely, I know there are always two sides to each story. As a clinician, I can’t walk down the rabbit hole on any particular theory.

A child’s perception of a parent’s emotional state is filtered through their own fear, their own history, their own desperate need to make sense of an unstable environment. Romy’s read on that kitchen could be accurate. It could also be an almost-thirteen-year-old pattern-matching against every bad night she remembers, finding danger in ordinary restlessness because that’s what her nervous system was built to do. I’d need a lot more than a phone call to know which one it is.

I also slept with her father Monday night, which makes me the last person who should be drawing conclusions.

“Kids exaggerate stress.”

Another scoff, this one louder. “You sound like Hannah used to.”

The words are a gut punch.

“She defended him too,” Esme continues, quieter now. “Every single time. Right up until she didn’t.”

I stare at the watercolor print. “That doesn’t mean he hurt her.”

“No.” A long exhale. “It doesn’t, but I’d feel a lot better if someone who didn’t work with him was asking the questions. Thin blue line, and all that.”

“I’m not in law enforcement.” As if I’m sitting here with a badge and a conflict of interest. “As a psychiatrist, it’s my job to look at every angle of a story.”

Esme sighs. “Right. Sorry. I’m just very frustrated right now.”

After we disconnect, I read the screenshot again.

A woman in genuine psychological distress sends dramatic texts at two in the morning. That’s documented, that’s common, that’s not evidence of anything except a bad night and a trusted contact. The phrasing itself—I can’t figure out how to do it—suggests cognitive paralysis, not planning.

People who are actively preparing to leave don’t frame departure as an unsolvable problem. They open separate bank accounts. They research apartments in other counties. They stop telling their best friends they can’t figure it out.

And yet.

A woman who would rather endure a marriage than lose her children does not board a plane and never look back.

And yet.

A woman pushed past a certain threshold—one who has come to believe that the people she loves would simply be better off without her—might do something that looks, from the outside, exactly like leaving. Pack a bag. Write a note. Create the conditions for the people she’s leaving behind to build something better in her absence.

And yet.

When a woman reaches that place, it isn’t usually Paris she moves toward. It’s silence. The permanent kind. The one that doesn’t require a passport.

I set my phone face down on the desk.

THIRTEEN

By six thirty, snow flurries drift across Cleveland while I heat leftover soup at the stove. The local news mumbles from the living room. I’m barefoot, wearing leggings and one of Conor’s old academy sweatshirts he left behind last week.

That’s a development I haven’t fully processed.

Three hard knocks rattle the door frame.

I open the door and tension rolls off him hard enough to change the air.

No kiss. No smile.

“She wrote a fucking article.” Anger runs beneath every word like a current.

I step aside while he moves into the living room. “I saw it.”

“Of course you did.” He turns on his heel, both hands raking through his hair. “Do you have any idea what this does? What she’s doing?”

His voice isn’t raised. Which almost makes it worse.

“She didn’t accuse you of anything directly.”

“She didn’t have to.” He shoots me a look. “All she did was hand every gossiping asshole in Monroe County a megaphone. She’s trying to poison a judge before this even gets finalized.”

“Do you really think a circuit court judge is reading local opinion columns?”

“Yes.” He turns fast enough that the movement startles me. “I think judges are human beings who don’t love signing off on divorces for men the entire county thinks murdered their wives.”

Murdered grows fangs and follows him back to the window like it’s been waiting for someone to finally say it out loud.

Neither of us speaks.

Conor exhales hard and drags both hands through his hair again. When he looks at me, the sharp edge has worn off, leaving exhaustion behind.

“I loved my wife.” The words come rough now. “Whatever problems we had…I loved her.”

Past tense.

I hear it land and watch myself hear it land, forcing myself into professional distance. It’s what I do when my personal reaction is unreliable. “I loved her” from a man whose wife is missing can mean he’s grieving something he can’t name. It can mean the marriage died before she left and he’s being honest about that. It can mean other things too, darker things, things I can’t examine while I’m standing barefoot in his sweatshirt with Esme Kincaid’s text messages still on my phone.

“Do you believe me?”

My pulse refuses to behave.

When I don’t respond right away, he turns to the window, his hands clamped behind his neck.

I move toward him before I’ve made a conscious decision to move. Professional habit or personal compulsion, I can’t tell anymore. It’s the same way I’ve walked into difficult rooms my entire career, operating on the faith that understanding people is a form of protection.

I’ve never been certain that’s true.

“Hey.” I reach for his arm. “Take a breath.”

He whips around fast, faster than the room has space for. His forearm catches my shoulder before either of us can stop it. My heel catches my laptop bag and there’s nothing behind me but floor. It arrives hard.

Pain explodes through my hip.

Conor freezes.

And all I can think about is Hannah.

“Shit.” Conor drops to his knees and his hands hover near my arms without touching. Close enough to help. Too careful to assume he’s welcome.

“Jo.” The sharp edge is completely gone. “Are you hurt?”

Shock sits across his face. Real shock, openly worn, the face of a man who didn’t see himself doing this.

At least that’s what it looks like.

I know exactly how remorse is supposed to appear. I’ve interviewed men who sobbed over bones they personally broke. Presentation proves nothing.

“I’m okay.” It comes out thinner than I intend.

“You’re not.” His hands still hover, held just clear of my arms and something about that stillness is worse than if he’d simply reached for me. “You fell hard.”

No “you startled me.” No “why were you standing there.” No “I didn’t shove you.”

Abusive personalities protect themselves instinctively after violence, especially the accidental kind. They minimize. Redirect. Explain before concern enters the room. The self-preservation instinct fires faster than genuine remorse in men who’ve had practice.

Conor just looks horrified.

Which proves absolutely nothing. Intelligent men learn how to shift their faces into various expressions too.

He reaches toward me again, slowly this time, a deliberate half speed that gives me room to pull away.

I don’t.

Another thing my brain notices.

His hands settle beneath my arms, and he helps me sit upright against the couch. The movement sends pain through my hip, enough that my face tightens before I can stop it.

“Dammit.” He closes his eyes. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“You’re not.”

His jaw works with everything he’s holding back. Fear, not anger, unless I’m reading him badly.

He crouches in front of me with his elbows on his knees, and I become aware that I’m sitting on my own living room floor in his sweatshirt. His name printed across the chest in cracked gold letters. I haven’t washed it because I didn’t want to wash away his scent.

That tells me too much about how far I’ve already let this go.

Conor looks at the floor between us, like it might offer some explanation. “I turned too fast. You were closer than I realized.”

I adjust my position and manage not to wince this time. “You don’t have to explain it.”

His gaze comes back to mine instantly. “Yes…I do.”

Interesting.

Most people move toward self-preservation after moments like this. Conor seems stuck somewhere uglier—like the possibility of what this looks like matters more to him than managing his own exposure. Like he needs me to understand it wasn’t what it was. The inconvenience is almost beside the point. The alternative is unbearable.

Or maybe he knows exactly how this looks and understands that the fastest way through it is to behave like a man with nothing to hide.

Both possibilities sit on the board.

Conor rubs a hand over his face hard enough to redden the skin. “I scared you.”

The statement lands differently than “I hurt you.”

Fear versus injury. It’s a meaningful distinction, and he reached for the right one, which is either instinct or calculation. I genuinely cannot tell which.

My dissertation focused partly on behavioral presentation among law enforcement officers accused of domestic violence. Not guilt…presentation. Escalation patterns. Public versus private behavioral divergence. The difference between a man who loses control and a man who deploys it. I spent three years studying the gap between the two, and I still couldn’t always tell them apart in a room.

That knowledge doesn’t make this easier to interpret.

Abusive men can panic after violence. Good men can lose spatial awareness during emotional distress. Genuine remorse and manipulative remorse wear identical clothing and answer to the same name.

The accumulation of moments matters more than any single incident.

I don’t have enough moments with Conor yet.

He pushes to his feet. “Ice.”

He goes to the kitchen. Cabinet doors open and close. The simmer dies as he turns the stove off. He comes back with a dish towel wrapped around a bag of frozen peas and kneels without speaking, pausing just short of my hip.

“Can I?”

The question is so very careful.

At my nod, cold blooms against my hip, and I hiss through my teeth.

“Sorry.” His voice drops on the word, roughened at the edges. “I’m so sorry, Jo.”

He doesn’t look away when he says it. His throat moves as he swallows, and color has risen along his jaw in a way I’ve never seen on him before.

That unsettles me more than excuses ever could.

I keep my hands folded in my lap. “You’ve never lost your temper with me before.”

The silence that follows stretches long enough to matter.

He rubs a hand over his face. “I try very hard not to.”

Another answer that holds more than one meaning. Men with tempers know they have them. The important question is whether they resent that knowledge or rely on it.

“I shouldn’t have come over tonight.” He says it to the floor.

“Probably not.”

Something moves across his expression at the agreement. Like he’d braced for comfort and found honesty instead, and isn’t sure yet whether that’s better or worse.

Conor stares at the ice pack for a long moment. “I meant what I said earlier.”

“About what?”

“Hannah.” His throat works. “I loved her.”

Past tense again.

My brain circles it with red ink, the same way it did the first time, running the same interpretations. Grief. Honesty about a marriage that was already over. Something darker.

“I know.”

“No.” He finally looks at me. “I don’t think you do.”

It feels like he’s talking about more than Hannah. Like somewhere beneath all of this, he’s understood from the beginning that I’ve been watching him. Filing things away. Running him through frameworks.

The thought sends a chill along my spine.

“You’re analyzing me right now.” His voice isn’t accusatory. Just tired. “I can practically see it happening.”

My pulse stumbles. The honest answer is yes. Always yes. The harder answer is that I’ve stopped being sure where the analysis ends and something else begins.

“I’m a psychiatrist.”

“You’re something.” A humorless sound escapes him. “I just haven’t figured out what yet.”

Neither of us speaks.

His gaze drops back to my hip and guilt moves across his face with enough force that it looks involuntary. He adjusts the ice pack without being asked.

Or maybe I’m extending him humanity because I want to. That possibility belongs on the board too.

“Tell me to leave.”

The words carry the same force they had on Monday in my doorway, when he was rain-soaked and wanting and the only thing at stake was my professional judgment.

Tonight the stakes are different. I’m sitting on my floor in his sweatshirt with a bruise forming on my hip and a photograph of his wife’s arm on my phone, and I already know what I’m going to say.

Some part of me has already decided.

That part frightens me more than he does.

“Don’t go.”

FOURTEEN

The Christmas cart squeaks every time the left wheel turns.

Somebody wrapped the handle in green tinsel overnight and attached a crooked plastic wreath to the side with enough clear packing tape to survive a hurricane. Donated gifts overflow from plastic bins in uneven piles. Crossword puzzle books. Fuzzy socks with rubber grips. Journals without metal spirals. Knit gloves. Stress balls. Candy canes bendy enough not to qualify as weapons.

River Valley’s version of holiday magic.

I shift my grip on the cart when my hip protests. Two weeks out and the bone bruise still tightens every time I bend wrong or stand too long. The worst of the color has faded to yellow green. I’ve been photographing it daily under my bathroom light.

Evidence, my brain insisted, without specifying what kind.

Conor kisses it every time he sees me.

I don’t know what to feel about that. Once would be apology. Twice might still be guilt. Every single time begins to feel like something else—a ritual, a need to reassure himself that I’m still letting him close enough to touch the damage.

Or I’m assigning meaning where none exists, which is what my brain does. Dissects. Categorizes. Finds pattern in coincidence and intention in reflex.

Presentation proves nothing.

Neither does tenderness.

And yet some part of me is still waiting for the version of him Esme Kincaid believes in to step fully into the light.

“You’d think with two hundred and thirty-three patients somebody could donate us a damn working cart,” Tammy mutters as she badges us through the security door.

River Valley sprawls wider than most people realize—nearly twenty-two acres, three connected buildings, six primary treatment wings. Acute stabilization on the west side. Subacute long-term care in the center. Men’s general psychiatric down the north hall. The forensic services wing sits isolated behind its own secured checkpoint, a reminder that what lay beyond required extra doors for a very good reason.

Christmas music drifts through the main corridor. On a holiday schedule, there’s no formal group therapy, no evaluations unless somebody strips naked or threatens homicide before lunch. But medications still need passing, behaviors still need documenting and suicidal patients still need eyes on them every fifteen minutes.

Holiday spirit only goes so far in psychiatric medicine.

By late morning, we move into the quieter center wings. The atmosphere shifts almost immediately. Less tension. Less posturing. Much more sadness.

The women’s subacute unit has paper snowflakes taped to the nurses’ station windows and construction paper ornaments hanging from the ceiling tiles. The ancient plastic tree sheds silver garland every time the heat kicks on. Home Alone plays in the dayroom while patients wrapped in donated blankets drift between recliners.

At the far end of the room, Cathy Davis sits heavily medicated beneath a fleece blanket. Amanda stares at Miracle on 34th Street on the second television near the windows, her expression chemically smoothed past the point of landing anywhere.

Both women remain difficult cases. Every medication reduction ends the same way—agitation, violence, restraints, staff injuries—and both continue to be more sedated than I’d like, which is a discomfort I carry quietly because the alternative has already put two orderlies on modified duty.

I kneel beside Amanda’s chair with a blue blanket from the donation bin. “Merry Christmas.”

Her gaze shifts toward me by slow degrees. Life almost surfaces behind her eyes. It drifts away just as quickly. Her fingers brush the blanket.

“Do you have children?”

The question catches me hard enough that Cathy notices.

“She asks everybody that now,” Cathy says, without looking up from beneath her blanket.

Amanda keeps watching me. Waiting.

The honest answer is that I do and I don’t. That I carried a son for thirty-four weeks and left the hospital without him, and that the surgeons who stopped my bleeding took everything else with them when they were done. That I’ve spent the past three years constructing a life that doesn’t require what I no longer have.

What I crave.

None of that is an answer I can give in this room.

“No.” The easiest and hardest lie.

Amanda studies my face for another moment before turning back toward the movie. “Neither do I.”

The room goes still around that sentence.

It’s the first time, to my knowledge, that she’s denied having children. Her medication has been smoothing the edges of everything she knows about herself, rounding down her history into something manageable and wrong. I file the moment away in the same place I file everything about Amanda—carefully, without examining it too closely.

Cathy watches me from beneath heavy-lidded eyes. “You look tired today, Doctor Jo.”

“I am tired.”

“You should sleep more.” A crooked smile pulls at her mouth. “People make mistakes when they’re tired.”

The words follow me long after I leave the unit.

Because people make mistakes when they’re wide awake too.

By evening the hospital has settled into a strange, exhausted lull.

Acute psych remains loud somewhere down the west corridor. Someone screams intermittently about demons near intake. A nurse laughs too hard at something from the medication room. Christmas lights blink above the main nurses’ station while snow drifts against the windows.

I eat peppermint bark from a tin left in the breakroom alone in my office during second shift. Through the window, the parking lot sits mostly empty under yellow security lights. There’s a distinct loneliness to being somewhere that never fully closes.

My phone lights up.

Conor.

Warmth moves through me before I can intercept it.

I wait until the third ring. “Hey.”

Noise fills the background. Children laughing. Someone arguing about marshmallows with conviction.

Family sounds.

“I miss you.” His voice is warmer than the fireplace I can hear crackling in the background.

“You’ve been gone three days.”

“Longest three days of my life.”

“That’s dramatic.”

“I’m wounded you don’t appreciate my suffering.”

Waylen shouts something unintelligible. Conor laughs away from the phone before answering him, and the sound finds the place low in my chest that I spent two years trying to close off after Luke left.

Luke, who married me at twenty-six and held my hand through thirty-four weeks of a pregnancy that ended in blood and silence and a delivery room where a doctor told us there would be no more. Who tried, for almost a year, to love me through the grief of it before realizing he’d been grieving too, and that some losses crack a marriage along a fault line it can’t survive.

Asher would have been three this past October.

I don’t let myself think about that for very long.

“How’s Breckenridge?”

“Cold.” More laughter in the background. “My father nearly broke his ass skiing yesterday, which honestly improved everyone’s holiday.”

“And your mother?”

“Teaching Romy how to make homemade hot chocolate. Apparently powdered packets are a moral failure.”

The image moves through my chest before my brain can intercept it. Romy at a kitchen counter, resistant and watchful, learning a new recipe from a grandmother I’ve not yet met.

Conor’s voice drops. “You should be here.”

“You need to be with your kids.”

“I know.” A sigh. “Doesn’t mean I don’t wish you were here too.”

Silence settles between us. The comfortable kind, which is worse than tense. Comfortable silence requires trust, which hurts to think about.

“The final publication runs Wednesday,” I say to fill the space.

December 30.

“One more.” He exhales. “Then another thirty days I’ll have to hold my breath.”

Part of me wonders whether he chooses words like that deliberately. Whether every exhausted confession and vulnerable admission arrives carefully constructed. The rest of me is tired of thinking that way, which might be exactly what careful construction is designed to produce.

“We’ll survive thirty more days.”

He chuckles. “You say that like you’ve met my mother.”

“I’ll see you Sunday.”

“I can’t wait.” A brief silence. “And Jo?” Something in his tone shifts the air in my office. “I don’t plan to spend another Christmas without you.”

Snow taps against the window.

A fireplace I haven’t sat beside. Children I haven’t yet met. Stockings I didn’t hang. The warm, ordinary architecture of a family Christmas that belongs to someone else entirely. And some traitorous part of me wants it anyway, wants it with a want I recognize from a long time ago, from before I understood how much wanting costs.

Asher would have been three this past October.

I’ve already thought that once tonight.

It bears thinking twice.

“I miss you too.”

I hang up before he can hear the pain underneath it.

FIFTEEN

Snow still clings to the edges of Conor’s driveway in uneven gray ridges when I pull in behind his truck.

Bright lights glow along the neighboring houses despite Christmas ending over a week ago. Half the neighborhood seems too exhausted to take decorations down. Inflatable snowmen lean drunkenly across frozen lawns. A blinking reindeer twitches beside somebody’s mailbox like it’s dying in Morse code.

Conor opens the front door before I reach the porch. “There she is.”

Dark jeans. Charcoal henley. Barefoot, with reading glasses hooked into his collar. Heat moves through me embarrassingly fast.

Domesticity should not be this attractive.

I lift my nose to the air. “I don’t smell anything burned.” I shift the wrapped present in my arms, juggling it with a good bottle of wine. “I almost picked up Chinese on the way, just in case.”

“I’m a good cook.”

“You also once told me cereal counts as dinner.”

“It does.”

“So there was room for doubt.”

He reaches for a strand of my hair and wraps it around his finger. “You can leave if you want.”

I step inside instead.

The warmth hits first. Then Hannah.

She’s everywhere.

The tree stands in the corner of the living room, glowing with white lights and handmade ornaments. School pictures dangle beside glitter-covered candy canes. A ceramic ornament painted with WAYLEN in shaky blue letters hangs crooked near the bottom.

A garland winds along the mantel between pillar candles in glass hurricane vases—cream colored, expensive looking, chosen by a woman with an eye for it. A wooden nativity scene sits arranged on the side table. Christmas villages line the windowsills. Everywhere something sits or hangs or glows, Hannah’s taste is visible, her hand in it, her choices still running the house.

Family photographs line the mantel above the garland. Beach vacations. Pumpkin patches. Matching pajamas on Christmas morning beside this same fireplace. Hannah smiles from every surface like she might walk back into the room at any moment.

Conor sets the present I brought on the bench near the door while I’m still looking at a framed photo near the staircase. Hannah in oversized sunglasses, laughing into the camera while Waylen hangs upside down from Conor’s shoulders.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

Lie.

Conor takes the wine and hangs my coat beside a small pink puffer jacket. He catches me examining it.

“The kids are at Tom and Cynthia’s until ten.” His voice softens around “the kids” the way it always does. “Romy and Waylen are thick as thieves with their two.”

“You still have Christmas up.”

He follows my gaze to the tree. “Romy threatened bodily harm if I took it down before she’s ready.” He scratches his jaw. “And honestly, I like having it up too.”

“Hannah loved Christmas?”

“Yeah.” His expression moves somewhere quieter. “The kids have already lost enough. I can repaint walls later. Move furniture later. Toss things later. Right now, they need things to stay familiar.”

My dissertation sits at the back of my skull. I know the framework it wants to apply—exaggerated emotional attunement as a form of image management, performed sensitivity as social armor. I know it because I wrote it.

I also know that a man trying to hold his children’s world together after their mother vanished might just be a man trying to hold his children’s world together.

The problem is I can’t tell the difference from here.

“Hungry?” He nods toward the kitchen.

“Starving.”

The kitchen is even more intimate than the rest of the house.

Children’s artwork covers one side of the refrigerator beneath magnets from vacations and school events. A calendar still hangs near the pantry, handwriting across several squares.

Romy: dentist 4 p.m.

Waylen: basketball practice 10 a.m.

Hannah: haircut 2 p.m.

Still turned to August. The month she disappeared. A haircut appointment for a woman who never came home.

My stomach dips hard enough that I look away. Conor catches the direction of my gaze and says nothing. Smart man.

He pours me a glass of wine and sets a tall glass of sweet tea beside his own plate. “You not having any?”

“I don’t drink anymore.”

Surprised, I set the glass down. “I didn’t know that. I wouldn’t have brought it.”

“I don’t mind.” A small shrug. “It’s been a while. I’m well past minding.” He pulls me close. “There’s still a lot we haven’t told each other.” His hand settles low on my abdomen, light enough to be a question. “Like your scar.”

The air changes.

“I lost a baby. And then I lost everything else on the same day.” The words come out steadier than I expect. “I can’t have children.”

Conor doesn’t fill the silence with reassurance. Doesn’t rush to minimize or redirect. He just sits with it, with me, his hand still warm where the scar runs beneath my clothes.

“I have children.” He presses his lips to my hair. “Who need a mother.”

The words find every hollow place inside me.

I’ve spent the past few years learning how to answer “do you have children” without flinching. How to say no in a voice that doesn’t cost anything. I got so good at it that I almost convinced myself the wanting had faded.

It hadn’t.

It was just waiting for someone to say exactly that.

I reach for my wine glass because I need something to do with my hands.

He kisses my hair again. “Let’s eat.”

Dinner is annoyingly good.

He watches me across the table like he can’t entirely believe I’m sitting there, finally, inside his home. I know that look. I’ve written about it, used it in interview rooms, watched it dissolve people who should have known better.

Apparently, I’m people.

“You survived Breckenridge with two children under thirteen. That alone deserves recognition.”

“Waylen threw snowballs at a ski instructor named Derek because Derek told him pizza-shaped skis help beginners slow down.”

“That’s fair. Derek sounds condescending.”

“Romy informed me snowboarding would’ve looked cooler.” Fondness moves across his face. “She’s thirteen in two weeks and already embarrassed by my existence.”

“She’s a visionary.”

He laughs quietly and the sound does something inside me that I’ve stopped pretending isn’t happening.

We exchange gifts beside the tree after dinner.

Conor opens the satchel first. He runs both hands over the leather before looking up at me, something unreadable moving across his face. “Jo.”

“You carry paperwork like a depressed Victorian detective.”

He pulls out the socks—three pairs, including the ones printed with crime scene tape that I added at midnight on impulse—and his laugh comes out real and unguarded. When he finds the fountain pen underneath, something quieter replaces it.

“You don’t like it?”

His mouth twitches. “Open yours.”

The first box holds a psychology text I’ve wanted for two years—first edition, notes scribbled in the margins in faded ink from a long-dead psychiatrist with strong opinions about attachment theory.

“You remembered.”

“I remember everything about you.”

The second box holds a fountain pen. Identical to the one I wrapped for him.

We look at each other. Then at the matching pens. Then back at each other.

“I saw it in a bookstore window in November.”

“I saw it in a bookstore window in December.”

We laugh at the same time, the unselfconscious kind that fills a room and I feel it in the same place I feel everything about him—somewhere inconveniently central.

The third box holds diamond earrings delicate enough to make my pulse stutter. Oval cut. The kind I would have chosen for myself.

“Diamonds look good on you.” His attention drops to my hands, to my bare ring finger. His thumb moves across it slowly. “I want to buy you more.”

The words settle somewhere I’m not ready to examine.

I put the earrings in instead and let that be enough for now.

His bedroom door closes softly behind us.

And Hannah waits there too.

An enormous framed portrait hangs above the bed. The four of them on a beach somewhere, squinting into sunlight. Hannah’s blonde hair lifted by wind while the children cling to both parents. All of them laughing at something the camera caught but didn’t explain.

Perfect family.

Frozen forever above the bed where I’m about to sleep with her husband.

Conor reaches for me and his mouth brushes mine slowly, like he already understands this room changes things.

“You’re thinking too hard again.”

Occupational hazard.

His hand slides beneath the hem of my sweater, fingers warm against my skin and I stop thinking so hard.

The bruise on my hip has faded to faint yellow shadows. Barely visible in the low light. Conor kneels and presses his lips against it, and the tenderness of it moves through me.

“Still sore?”

“Only when I exist.”

“That bad?”

“I’m dramatic.”

“You are.”

The C-section scar catches his attention next. His fingers brush across the pale line before he presses his lips to it too, and that’s when I know the gentleness is going to wreck me completely if I let it continue.

I don’t. Can’t.

I pull him up, push him back against the mattress and take this moment into my own hands. Because if something is going to happen in this room, in this bed, beneath that portrait, I’ll be the one who decides how.

His hands find my waist as I move above him. When his body connects with mine, I look up at the portrait.

Hannah stares back at me from above her own bed, her husband’s hands on the woman who chose to be here. I hold her gaze and don’t look away.

I move again and his grip tightens and he says my name like it costs him the world. Every sound he makes is mine, pulled from him by me, in this room, in this bed. The portrait watches from above and I let it watch.

I look up at it.

Hannah on a beach, hair lifted, children tucked close. The whole beautiful ordinary life of her frozen in a frame above her own bed.

I study her long enough that her face stops being her face.

She’s me.

My hair. My husband beside me. My children wrapped around my arms. A life that should be mine.

I move through the guilt. Through the triumph that washes the guilt away like water rising through cracks. Then I arrive at longing, the oldest of the three, the one that was here before the others and will be here long after.

For the ordinary, unremarkable shape of belonging somewhere. For a son who would have been three in October and a husband who couldn’t survive losing him and a version of myself left on the operating table.

All three at once. Unsorted. Contradictory. Too large for the room and nowhere to put them.

Conor says my name.

Mine.

I look down at him, and the portrait recedes and there is only this. His hands and the low light and the snow falling silent outside the window, and the fact that, for this one beautiful moment, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

I let myself have it.

Hannah lives in the bathroom too.

Makeup arranged in acrylic organizers. A curling iron beneath the sink. Prescription bottles. Hair products lined along the counter. A perfume bottle nearly empty beside the faucet.

A woman interrupted midlife.

I open the top drawer to find lipsticks arranged in a neat row inside. I pick one up.

Rosewood pink. Expensive brand. The tip flattened from use.

Put it down.

I twist the lipstick higher instead.

The mirror catches me drawing the color slowly across my mouth. The ritual familiar in a way it shouldn’t be, the color settling against my skin like it was chosen for me.

Still me.

Which unsettles me more than the opposite would have.

A knock sounds at the door. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

His footsteps retreat. I look at my reflection for another moment—the earrings he bought me catching light, the color he might recognize when I walk back out, the face that is mine and has always been mine—before finally stepping away from the mirror.

Conor waits near the foot of the bed with the patient expression that keeps dismantling me, and he doesn’t ask about the lipstick.

We spend another few minutes beneath the blankets talking about nothing important. Work stories. Bad movies. Whether Waylen will survive elementary school without detonating the planet. Conversation comes easily now, without either of us reaching for the right words. Which is its own kind of intimacy and its own kind of danger.

By the time he walks me out, snow is falling again in slow spirals.

My breath clouds between us beside my car. “I had a good time tonight.”

Something vulnerable moves across his face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He kisses me slow enough that my knees register a complaint. When I reach for the car door, his thumb catches my lower lip before I’ve fully pulled away. His gaze holds there.

“That color looks good on you.”

My pulse stops.

For a moment, I can’t tell whether he knows exactly where it came from or whether he’s simply a man who notices things, or whether those are the same.

He smiles softly and steps back into the falling snow.

I drive home wearing Hannah Slater’s lipstick.

SIXTEEN

The cabin sits halfway up the mountain beneath a sky so clear it doesn’t look real.

Stars spill across the darkness in impossible numbers while Conor carries the overnight bags, taking the icy wooden steps two at a time. Cold air burns my lungs with every breath. Somewhere deeper in the trees, water rushes over rocks hidden beneath the dark.

I stop beside the railing and tilt my head back.

“You planning to come inside?” Conor unlocks the door. “Or should I leave breadcrumbs?”

“I’m having a spiritual experience.”

“With Gatlinburg?”

“With not hearing fluorescent lights buzzing over my head for once.”

Warm air spills out around him when he opens the door.

The inside looks exactly like every vacation rental website promises and almost never delivers. Massive stone fireplace. Exposed beams. Floor-to-ceiling windows facing endless black mountains stitched with distant cabin lights. A hot tub steams on the deck beyond the glass.

My shoulders loosen before I consciously permit it.

“Told you this was a good idea.”

“You’ve officially ruined every future Valentine’s Day.”

“I’m just setting the bar with this first one.”

The words land lightly, but something shifts underneath them anyway. Valentine’s Day. The first one since the judge signed the final decree.

We eat cross-legged on the rug in front of the fireplace because neither of us wants to bother with the dining table. Orange firelight moves across the windows while snow drifts beyond the glass.

Conor lifts his sweet tea. “To legally complicated progress.”

“Romantic.”

“I try.”

“You absolutely do not.”

A grin pulls at his mouth before it fades into something quieter. “When the judge signed the decree…” He stares into the fire. “I didn’t realize how worried I’d been.”

The honesty in his voice pulls me closer to him.

A judge looked at the facts and decided Hannah Slater willingly left her marriage behind. The state of Tennessee officially agrees with Conor. I know what the research says about institutional validation and the way a legal ruling reshapes public perception, even when the underlying facts haven’t⁠—

Stop.

I am not doing this here. Not tonight.

Conor presses his lips to my hair. “You disappeared into your head again.”

“I was thinking about how strange all of this is.”

“Good strange or serial killer strange?”

A surprised laugh escapes me. “Those categories overlap more than people realize.”

“That’s concerning from a psychiatrist.”

“I contain multitudes.”

The fire crackles in front of us. I curl closer against him beneath the blanket. His arm tightens around my shoulders and that automatic quality is what gets me—the way I’ve become something important he reaches for.

Conor brushes his thumb across my shoulder. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to say for months.” His expression has gone careful. His voice rough. “I love you.”

Heat rushes through my chest hard enough that the world grows dark at the edges.

“I loved you before Christmas.” His eyes shine with it. “Honestly, probably before that. I just couldn’t say it while I was still somebody else’s husband.”

Something opens in me at that. Something I’ve been keeping carefully closed.

I touch his face. “You should know this is probably a terrible idea.”

“Almost definitely.”

“You’re emotionally compromised.”

“You’re attracted to emotionally compromised people.”

“That’s unfortunately true.”

His forehead rests against mine, our breath mixing in the firelit solitude. “I love you, Jo.”

The second time is worse than the first. It goes deeper, finds places the first one missed, settles in parts of me I thought I’d successfully cauterized.

I press a hand to his heart. “I love you too.”

The relief that moves across his face is so immediate and unguarded that my chest physically aches from it.

He kisses me. I kiss him back. And for one reckless weekend, I decide to let myself believe nothing terrible is waiting beyond the mountains.

Saturday morning, I wake to the smell of coffee and the sound of sleet ticking against the windows.

Conor is already up, hunched over the kitchen counter in bare feet with his reading glasses on and his phone propped against the coffee maker, squinting at the screen like a man losing an argument with technology.

I stand in the doorway without announcing myself.

This is what I never let myself picture. The ordinary Saturday of it. The bare feet and the reading glasses and the coffee already made. The version of a person that only exists before the day has fully started, when the performance hasn’t kicked in yet and they’re just themselves in a kitchen.

This is the version of Conor Slater that either makes him the most dangerous man I know or the most human one.

I still don’t know which.

He looks up. The displeasure dissolves immediately. “Good morning.”

“Who are you fighting?”

“The Wi-Fi password has sixteen characters and two symbols. Designed by a sadist.”

“Leave it. One weekend without a signal won’t kill you.”

“What if there’s a case?”

“Then someone else will handle it for forty-eight hours.”

He sets the phone face down on the counter with the expression of a man making a significant sacrifice and kisses me.

Caffeine can wait.

The sleet clears by noon.

We hike a trail that climbs through bare trees into cold white silence, our breath clouding ahead of us, boots finding purchase on frozen ground. My wilderness expertise begins and ends with knowing that wet socks are a spiritual emergency. Conor laughs when I tell him this.

We don’t talk about the divorce. We don’t talk about Hannah or the divorce or the case a TBI agent has been quietly building. We talk about ordinary things instead. Terrifyingly ordinary things.

By the time we come back down the mountain, my face is numb and my heart is beating at a rhythm I’ve stopped trying to categorize.

Saturday night we drive down into Gatlinburg because Conor wants fudge and I want to see the lights. The town strings white lights everywhere—along the storefronts, across the walking bridges, up into the bare trees lining the main strip. Conor buys the fudge. I steal bites and hold his hand.

We stop on one of the footbridges over the river and lean against the railing while the water moves black and fast beneath us. Lights reflect in it, broken and shifting.

He curls a strand of my hair around his finger. “Romy’s going to give you a hard time.”

“I know.”

“It’s not personal. She’s scared.”

“I know that too.”

He looks at me in the light off the water. “She’s worth it. The hard part of her is worth it.”

Tears burn my eyes. “I believe you.”

He squeezes my hand and goes back to watching the river.

I watch him instead.

A man standing on a bridge in the cold, eating fudge, telling me his difficult daughter is worth the effort before I’ve even met her.

This is the version of him that makes everything impossible.

By Sunday evening, the Smokies disappear behind us in fading shades of blue and gray.

Conor keeps one hand on my thigh the entire drive back, the way he does when he’s reluctant to surrender our time together without a fight. By the time he pulls into my complex, night has settled across the town.

Neither of us move.

The engine idles softly.

“Thanks for a beautiful weekend.”

He reaches for me suddenly, both hands sliding along my jaw, holding my face with so much care that it almost undoes me on the spot. “I hate this part.”

“What part?”

“Leaving you here.” The words come out rougher than usual. His thumbs move slowly across my cheeks. “The moments you’re not with me…they’re unbearable sometimes.”

I place my hand over his heart. “I know.”

“Marry me.”

The words hit me so hard my brain blanks for a full ten seconds.

He shakes his head, a strained laugh escaping before he’s finished. “I know I’m not doing this right. I don’t have a ring. I know it’s fast. I know normal people probably date longer than five minutes before they do something completely insane.”

A startled laugh escapes me despite everything.

His expression softens the instant he hears it. “I’m serious, Jo.” His forehead drops against mine, his breath ragged and warm. “I need you beside me. In my bed. At my table. I need to wake up next to you instead of counting hours until I can see you again.”

“The kids.” I leap for all the reasons this is a terrible idea. “I haven’t even met them yet. And you officially can’t remarry until the appeal window closes on March⁠—”

“Thirteenth. I know.”

He’s been watching the calendar the way I’ve been watching it, counting down toward the same moment from opposite sides of the same secret.

“What about the kids? I⁠—”

“I want that to change next weekend.” His thumbs brush beneath my eyes. “I want them to know you.”

“What if they hate me?” The words come out smaller than I intend.

A shadow crosses his face before warmth returns. “They won’t.”

He can’t promise that. We both know it.

“I know what kind of woman you are.”

He has no idea.

But this is what I’ve wanted. The children at the table and the boots by the door and the ordinary Saturday morning of it, coffee already made, someone reaching for me without deciding to.

“Okay.”

His entire body sags with relief.

“That wasn’t a yes yet,” I add. “Just so we’re clear.”

A slow smile breaks across his face anyway. “Good.” He presses his lips to mine. “Because I’m probably going to ask again.”

Outside, Cleveland moves quietly around the car. Ordinary streets. Ordinary lights. A world that has no idea what just happened inside this vehicle.

March 13.

Twenty-six days.

Close enough to imagine.

Long enough for everything to change.

SEVENTEEN

I change my top three times before it’s time to go.

I end up in dark jeans, ankle boots, and a fitted burgundy sweater that manages to look like a first choice instead of a fourth one.

Rosewood pink wins the lipstick debate. I smooth the color across my lips and think of Hannah’s bathroom drawer. Hannah’s makeup. Hannah’s life sitting neatly organized inside acrylic compartments while I stood there in her husband’s shirt pretending I wasn’t crossing lines I couldn’t uncross.

“You’re spiraling,” I mutter at my reflection.

The drive to Strike Zone takes twenty-three minutes. I count because my nerves need somewhere to go.

Arcade machines flash near the entrance while teenagers cluster around air hockey tables under neon lighting that makes everyone appear faintly radioactive.

I stop just inside the doorway.

I’ve sat across from men who dismembered their families and described it with less emotion than they would recite a grocery list. I’ve testified in courtrooms packed with people who wanted me to fail. I’ve walked into state prisons with a visitor badge and a practiced poker face and walked back out intact.

Two children unsettle me more than any of that.

I spot them near lane twelve before I find him.

Waylen stands out first. Small body, enormous energy, a lime-green bowling ball nearly the size of his torso pinned against his chest while he delivers a serious speech to his father requiring both hands. He has Conor’s coloring and a gap-toothed grin destined to finance some orthodontist’s boat.

Romy sits behind them on the bench. Phone in hand. Shoulders tight. Thirteen years old and already wearing the expression of someone enduring a lifetime sentence.

Black jeans. Oversized hoodie. Dark blonde hair pulled into a careless knot.

I’ve seen enough photographs to recognize Hannah in her immediately. A chill moves through me before I can stop it.

Conor sees me before they do. Warmth breaks across his face. Not hunger or heat. This is softer than both.

He crosses to me with his hands already reaching, and the world narrows to the two of us.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Brilliant conversation.

His lips brush my cheek before he eases back and turns toward the kids. “Guys, I want you to meet someone.”

Waylen pivots so fast he nearly drops the bowling ball. “That’s her?” His eyes go wide. “Dad, that’s her?”

“That’s her.”

“Do you want to be on my team?” Waylen bounces on his toes. “Dad cheats.”

“I do not cheat.”

“You absolutely cheat.”

“Bold accusation.”

“I have witnesses.” He hoists the bowling ball higher. “And video evidence.”

Conor mutters, “Traitor,” under his breath.

Waylen grins like he’s accomplished something deeply meaningful.

Romy still hasn’t moved. Her phone rests beside her on the bench now, arms folded, eyes locked on me, not giving a damn that she’s openly staring.

Strike that. Openly glaring.

Conor opens his mouth. I step toward her first.

I know how to approach defensive teenagers. Keep your hands visible. Don’t crowd. Don’t force warmth they’ll smell immediately.

“Hi, Romy.”

She studies every inch of me before stopping on my ear. Her hazel eyes narrow. “My mom has earrings just like those.”

Heat floods my face so fast it physically hurts.

Did Conor give me Hannah’s jewelry?

For one horrifying second all I can picture is him watching me open the box, so proud, so certain I’d love them.

When I look at him, he’s already holding both hands up, his expression a silent, urgent message that screams, those are brand new.

“Mom has diamond earrings?” Waylen looks between us, baffled.

“Yes, Way.” Romy’s nostrils flare. “Mom has lots of pretty things.”

I have the receipt, Conor mouths behind her. I raise an eyebrow. He nods so hard I fear for his neck.

Romy catches us. Her scowl deepens. “Are you laughing at me?”

“Of course not.” I straighten my face. “I was going to say your mom sounds like she had beautiful taste.”

Romy’s expression turns murderous. “She has beautiful taste.” Her voice cracks like breaking glass. “Why does everybody talk about her like she’s dead?”

Silence drops across the lane. Even the arcade noise slips farther away.

Waylen stares at his sister. Conor goes perfectly still.

Romy looks horrified that the emotion got out at all. Horror turns to disgust as she looks at me.

“There she is,” a voice sneers somewhere in the back of my skull. “A mean girl.”

A middle school hallway. Fluorescent lights. Acne burning across my cheeks and someone laughing too loudly. Pointing. Saying hateful things.

Romy’s gaze moves back to my face, searching now instead of attacking. “I’m not sure what my dad even sees in you.” She lifts her chin. “You’re not even close to being as pretty as my mom.”

Even as the knife slices deep, a strange calm settles through me.

Because I know this feeling. Being measured against another woman and losing before the competition even starts. I wore it for years, in hallways and at dinner tables and in the space between who I was and who my parents wished I’d been.

Romy isn’t cruel.

She’s drowning.

And I’m standing too close to the water.

“That’s true.”

Conor is shaking his head. Waylen is spinning his bowling ball. Romy just stares at me, recalibrating.

“Your mom set a pretty high bar.”

A series of emotions move through her expression too fast to name. Conor exhales like a wire was loosened around his ribs.

Waylen steps directly into the silence with the social grace exclusive to seven-year-olds. “Can we bowl now? Dad gets worse if he thinks too much.”

Conor laughs, but not really. “I’m standing right here.”

“And you’re old.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your back makes sounds.”

I choke on a laugh before I can stop it.

Conor points at his son. “Betrayal everywhere tonight.”

Waylen beams and grabs my hand before I can fully process it. “Come on. You gotta see my bowling stance.”

His fingers are small and warm against mine.

My chest tightens hard enough to ache.

Because children should not be allowed to do this. To rip out your heart and reach for your hand in the same evening, trusting you to stay before they have any reason to believe you will.

Romy watches it happen from the bench.

For the first time since I walked in, she looks scared instead of angry.

The bowling itself becomes chaotic within seconds.

Waylen narrates every throw like ESPN hired him personally. Conor cheats exactly enough to keep his son invested without crushing his spirit. I roll two gutter balls in a row.

Romy watches with open disgust. “You bowl like a substitute teacher.”

I refuse to let the insult land. “That’s the meanest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“I doubt that.”

Conor’s mouth drops open. “Romy,” he warns.

“What?” Romy bats her lashes. “I’m trying to bond.”

“By psychologically attacking people?”

“That’s literally what women do.”

I laugh.

Romy blinks. Conor blinks.

She crosses her arms. “I’m serious.”

“You’re right.” I pick up another bowling ball. “You should hear psychiatric group therapy sometime. Women are terrifying.”

The corner of her mouth twitches before she catches it.

Tiny. Gone instantly.

But there.

Waylen trips over his untied shoelaces carrying pizza back toward the lane. The plate crashes. Then him. His face crumples from embarrassment more than pain.

“Oh, buddy.” I’m already kneeling beside him before I’ve decided to move.

Tears flood his eyes as I brush pizza sauce off his sweatshirt. “I’m okay,” he announces directly into my shoulder while actively crying.

“Obviously.”

“I didn’t even cry.”

“Absolutely not.”

He wraps both arms around my neck. Full-body trust. The kind children extend before they understand there are adults who don’t deserve it.

My throat tightens hard enough to ache.

Across the lane, Romy watches in silence. Conor watches too. Softness moves across his face before he looks away.

By the time the night ends, my cheeks hurt from smiling and my nerves are flayed to exposed wire.

Conor walks me to my car while the kids wait inside his truck. Cold air moves through the parking lot around us.

“I’m sorry,” he says into my hair.

I lean against my car door. “She’s trying to protect herself.”

Pain crosses his face fast enough to miss if I didn’t already know him too well. “Yeah.” His thumb brushes my cheek. “She is.”

Inside the truck, Waylen presses both palms dramatically against the passenger window the second he spots us looking over.

I laugh despite myself. Conor does too.

“You survived.”

“Barely.” I glance toward the truck. “Your son is weaponized charm.”

And Romy.

I can still feel how she measured me from across the lane. Comparing. Finding me measurably less than her mother and letting me know it without apology.

The worst part isn’t the comparison. It’s how quickly some bruised adolescent piece of me wanted to argue back. Wanted to prove something. Wanted to win against a thirteen-year-old girl who’s just trying to hold on to her mother.

I haven’t felt thirteen in a very long time.

Through the truck window, Romy stares straight ahead at nothing.

I know that posture. I wore it for years.

EIGHTEEN

By the first week of March, I know which stair in Conor’s house creaks loudest. Third from the bottom.

I know Waylen only eats strawberry Pop-Tarts if you toast them first. Otherwise, the texture is “suspicious.” I know Romy steals the peppermint mocha creamer every morning while pretending she doesn’t want it. I know Conor’s mother cries when she thinks nobody’s watching.

And I know exactly where Hannah’s presence is strongest inside this house.

Everywhere.

A framed photograph near the hallway. Her winter coats still hanging inside the closet beneath the stairs. Hair ties in the bathroom drawer. Her gardening gloves beside the garage door, waiting for hands that never came back for them.

Nobody talks about moving any of it.

Least of all me.

“Jo.” Waylen appears in the kitchen doorway wearing pajama pants and one sock. “Dad said I’m not allowed to survive on frozen waffles.”

“That’s because your father believes in vitamins.”

“He’s bossy.”

“Tragic.”

He climbs onto a stool while I cut strawberries for protein pancakes.

This kitchen once belonged entirely to someone else. Now I move through it automatically, reaching for the right drawer, the right shelf, without thinking.

It’s mine now. At least almost.

“Can I have chocolate chips too?”

“We already negotiated strawberries.”

“I’m a growing boy.”

“You’re a growing dictator.”

He grins, the gap between his teeth showing. “Dad says leadership skills are important.”

Conor walks in behind him carrying a laundry basket. “I said confidence was important.”

Waylen points dramatically. “See? Leadership.”

Conor kisses the top of my head while passing behind me. “You’re spoiling him.”

“He’s seven.”

“He’s becoming emotionally dependent on pancakes.”

“Same.”

The warmth of the morning slides through me.

Conor’s mother patted my hand last Sunday after dinner. “I haven’t seen him this happy in years.” The words hit like narcotics. They shouldn’t matter to me this much.

They absolutely do.

Footsteps sound overhead.

Romy.

The mood in the kitchen shifts in an instant.

She walks in wearing leggings and one of her mom’s hoodies, still half asleep, dark blonde hair loose around her shoulders. Hannah in miniature, moving through her mother’s kitchen like she owns it.

Which she does.

“Jo made breakfast.” Waylen points at the pancakes.

Romy’s eyes flick toward me before she reaches for the peppermint mocha creamer to pour into the hot chocolate warming on the stove.

“Thanks,” she grumbles.

Romy’s hostility hurts. Her effort to be polite somehow hurts even more.

Conor studies her over his coffee mug. “You finish your science project?”

“I will.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

Romy rolls her eyes hard enough to threaten structural damage. “You’re literally a cop. Why are you interrogating me before school?”

“It’s what I do.”

She grabs a pancake off the plate before he can stop her.

“Romy.”

“I’m growing.”

Waylen clutches his chest. “That’s my line.”

She almost smiles.

Then her phone buzzes and the expression vanishes.

That evening, I stand alone in the kitchen rinsing coffee mugs while the television hums from the living room.

Conor took Waylen outside to throw a football before dinner. Romy disappeared upstairs an hour ago, slamming her bedroom door hard enough to rattle the framed photographs in the hallway.

My phone vibrates across the counter.

Esme Kincaid.

I answer anyway. “Hey.”

“What the hell are you doing?”

No greeting. Straight to violence.

I lean against the counter. “Hello to you too.”

“Romy called me crying.”

Ice slides down my spine. “What happened?”

“She said Conor told them he’s planning to marry you.”

The word knocks the air from my lungs. “We’ve talked about it.”

“You’ve talked about it.” Esme’s voice sharpens. “Jo, Hannah disappeared a year and a half ago.”

A year and seven months ago. Correcting her won’t improve this conversation.

“She didn’t die,” Esme continues. “She vanished. Suspiciously. Do you understand how insane this looks from the outside?”

The kitchen grows too warm.

“I know what I’m doing.”

Do I?

“I don’t think you do.” Fear roughens her voice beneath the anger. “I’m worried about you.”

“I’m fine, really. I⁠—”

“Blake Graves told me some of what he found.”

A cold stillness moves through me. “Like what?”

“Enough to know that Conor Slater is not the man you think he is. If you didn’t believe me, maybe you can believe a fucking TBI agent.”

My grip tightens on the counter.

Outside, Waylen laughs at something his father said. The sound carries through the cracked kitchen window.

“If you’re right.” I lower my voice. “Then I’ll be here to hold everything together for the kids if he’s arrested.”

Silence on the other end. Long enough that I can’t tell what she’s doing with it.

“Unless you disappear too.”

The words hollow a new space beside all my other hollows.

Because, for one awful second, I picture it. Another woman erased from this house. Another ghost lingering in photographs. Another absence everyone learns to walk around.

“I’m not Hannah.”

The problem is I no longer know exactly what I mean by that.

Esme says nothing for an uncomfortably long moment. When she speaks again, exhaustion has replaced the anger. “Just be careful.”

The call ends.

I stand motionless while my reflection stares back from the dark window over the sink.

Not Hannah.

Still me.

Probably.

“You okay?”

I startle hard enough to slosh water from the mug still in my hand.

Conor stands in the doorway with the football tucked under one arm, concern carving lines into his face. “Sorry. Everything okay?”

“Esme Kincaid called.”

His jaw tightens. “Ah.”

“Romy called her. She’s upset about us.”

Emotion moves through his expression, anger giving way to pain in quick succession. “She did?”

“Yes.” I set the mug down. “Let me talk to her.”

He studies me for a moment before nodding. “Okay.”

Upstairs, music leaks beneath Romy’s closed door.

I knock softly.

Nothing.

I knock again.

“What?”

“It’s Jo.”

Silence stretches long enough that I almost leave.

“You can come in.”

The room smells like vanilla lotion and nail polish remover. Clothes cover half the floor. String lights drape across one wall beside photographs taped around a mirror. Hannah smiles from many of them.

Romy sits cross-legged on her bed with her phone, pretending to scroll. She taps the music app and Sabrina Carpenter disappears mid-word.

“I just got off the phone with Esme.”

Her jaw tightens. “So?”

“She’s worried about you. Said you’re upset that I’m here most days.”

Guilt crosses her face before she shoves it down with an angry huff. “Did she tell you I cried like a freaking baby? Does that make you happy?”

Every instinct pulls me toward her. I stay where I am.

“You cried because your life changed overnight.”

“It’s changed almost every night since Mom left.”

I sink onto the desk chair across from the bed. Grief doesn’t respond well to direct pressure. It closes off, digs in, finds the nearest exit. Humor is a side door. “Your mom would probably hate my sweater.”

A laugh escapes her before she can stop it. “She definitely would.”

“She sounds like she had strong opinions.”

“She had opinions about everything.” Romy twists a loose thread on her blanket around one finger. “She used to make Dad change shirts before going out because she said he dressed like a divorced substitute teacher.”

“That’s devastating.”

“It’s accurate.”

The smile fades as fast as it came. Guilt moves in behind it, the way it always does when she lets herself enjoy a moment. Like laughter itself is disloyal.

I know that feeling too.

“Romy.” My throat tightens. “I need you to know something.”

She looks up. “What?”

I can be your mom.

“I’m so sorry about your mom.”

Pain moves hard across her face.

Nobody says Hannah’s name in this house unless absolutely necessary. Everyone walks around it instead, navigating the space where she used to be, careful not to disturb the outline.

“I don’t want to replace her.” The words come easily. Too easily, if I’m honest, because consciously they’re true. What lives below conscious is something I no longer review.

Romy stares down at the blanket in her lap. “My dad loves you.”

The sentence settles between us, fragile and exact.

“I love him too.” And you. And your brother. I swallow hard. “And I know how unfair that probably feels.”

Something cracks open in her then. I watch it happen.

“My mom used to braid my hair before volleyball games.” Her voice shakes. “Dad can’t do it right.”

My chest aches. “I know how it feels when someone’s lost.”

Her lower lip trembles. “You do?”

“My husband left after…” How do I explain this to a child? “After we lost the baby.”

She stares at me.

“I thought that was it for me after that.” The confession scrapes my throat raw on the way out. “I thought happiness was just…over.”

Romy twists her fingers together. “Then you met my dad.”

Not a question.

Tears flood my eyes before I can stop them. “I never wanted to hurt anybody.”

God, I want that to be true.

Her face crumples before she can stop it.

I move slowly enough to give her time to pull away.

She doesn’t.

The hug is stiff at first. Held breath. Careful shoulders. Just when I’m certain she’s going to pull back, she folds against me all at once with one deep inhale, like she’s been carrying grief alone for so long that her arms finally gave out.

I hold her while silent tears soak into my sweater.

Downstairs, cabinet doors open and close. Life continuing beneath us.

“If you marry him…” Romy’s voice catches against my shoulder. “Just don’t make him forget her.”

The words move through me like a blade finding a seam.

Because the thing she fears most isn’t replacement.

It’s erasure.

My throat burns. “I won’t.”

And God help me, I try to mean it.

A floorboard creaks near the doorway.

Conor stands there watching us. Relief and hope and something rawer than both move across his face, open in a way he doesn’t try to hide.

And the enormity of what I could destroy inside this house settles fully across my chest.

For the first time in weeks, I’m not entirely sure whether I’m saving this family.

Or whether I’m the ticking bomb.

NINETEEN

The dress hangs from the bathroom door as I attempt to repair the damage only three hours of sleep did to my eyes.

It’s the palest blue. Knee length, long bell sleeves, a scooped back that dips nearly to my waist with tiny pearls tracing the edges. From the front it’s almost conservative enough for church. The back ruins that illusion.

I stare at it, knowing exactly why I bought it.

I want Conor to look at me and forget Hannah ever existed.

That realization alone should probably qualify as a psychological evaluation.

The bouquet waits on the counter beside my earrings. Tiny white roses. Blue thistle. Silver-dollar eucalyptus. Conor’s mother picked them up from a florist in Sweetwater, because she apparently knows everyone within three counties and can organize a courthouse wedding without breaking a sweat.

My phone buzzes on the counter.

I think it’s Conor, and my stomach drops when “Blake Graves” flashes on the screen. I stare at his name until the phone stops vibrating. It starts again immediately.

“Hi, Blake.”

“Please tell me Esme’s wrong.” No greeting. No easing in.

“Wrong about what?”

“About you marrying him today.”

I look at the dress.

Pale blue.

Absurdly hopeful.

“Yes.”

A clipped breath moves through the phone. Not quite anger. Something worse. Fear trying to stay professional.

“Jo.”

“I know what you’re going to say.”

“No, you don’t.” His voice drops. “You don’t, because if you did, you wouldn’t be doing this.”

The bathroom mirror catches my face, bare except for moisturizer and the shadows beneath my eyes.

I look younger without makeup.

Less armored.

“I have to finish getting ready.”

“Don’t do this.”

I grip the counter. “You don’t get to call me on my wedding day and say that.”

“I do if I think you’re in danger.”

Anger would be easier than the cold spreading through my chest. “I’m not in danger.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know Conor.”

“No.” His voice hardens. “You know the version of him he lets you know.”

A clinician should be immune to that sentence. We say versions of it constantly—to patients, to families, to juries, to ourselves when we feel clever enough to confuse insight with immunity.

It still hits.

“What else did you find?”

Silence.

That’s when I know. Not proof. Something both better and worse. Something interpretable.

“Hannah consulted a divorce attorney six days before she disappeared.”

The room tilts a degree. I don’t move.

“Not the earlier separation filing. This was different. Private consult. Different county. Paid cash.”

Six days.

There has to be another explanation. “People consult attorneys all the time.”

“I know.”

“She could’ve changed her mind.”

“I know that too.”

“She could’ve decided to leave instead.”

“Maybe.” His pause stretches too long. “But the attorney remembers her because Hannah asked a very specific question.”

Air doesn’t want to leave my lungs.

“What question?”

“If a police officer has friends in every local agency, how does his wife divorce him without him hurting her or taking the kids?”

The bathroom hums around me. Vent fan. Distant traffic. The mechanical buzz of a light fixture that probably needs replacing.

My dress hangs from the door. The bouquet waits beside the sink.

The possibilities stand side by side, equally terrible.

“I’m not Hannah,” I whisper.

“What?”

Wrong thing to say out loud. “I have to go.”

“Listen to me.” Blake’s control cracks. “If you want to walk into this later, after we know more, after someone outside Sweetwater PD has reviewed everything properly, fine. I’ll hate it, but fine. But today? With his kids there? With his parents? With all of them looking at you like you’re the answer to what happened to that family?”

“Don’t.” The word catches. It hurts more that way. “Don’t make this sound like I’m doing something to them.”

“Aren’t you?”

The question opens like a wound.

My eyes burn.

Waylen’s arms around my neck. Romy’s voice against my shoulder. “Just don’t make him forget her.” Conor on the bridge in Gatlinburg, telling me the hard part of his daughter was worth it. Conor’s hands on my face in a dark car, asking me to marry him like the words had broken loose from somewhere he could no longer contain.

“I love him.”

“I believe you.”

The answer lands badly.

Because Blake does believe me. He believes that’s part of the danger. And it probably is.

“Blake, if Conor did something to Hannah…” I’ve never uttered a sentence more carefully in my life. “Then being close to him, living inside his home, is the only way I can find out. The only way to protect those children.”

It sounds reasonable. Professional. Almost noble.

I hate how much I need it to.

“And if you find actual evidence against him?”

I grip the phone tighter. “Then I turn him in.”

A beat of silence followed by a laugh that holds no humor.

“You hear yourself right now?” His voice roughens. “You’re talking like some kind of honey trap.”

Heat crawls up my neck. “That’s not fair.”

“Then what is it?”

The question finds the place I’ve been avoiding for weeks.

If Conor didn’t hurt Hannah, then I’m marrying a man while quietly collecting reasons to doubt him. If Hannah left willingly, then I’m stepping into a life she chose to abandon and calling it rescue because rescue sounds better than hunger.

A woman marrying a man she loves.

A woman taking the seat another woman left empty.

A woman who wants the children at the table and the boots by the door and the ordinary Saturday mornings.

A woman who has already learned where the mugs go.

“I’m doing this.”

Blake says nothing. A long, awful pause. “I know.”

That’s why he sounds so tired.

I end the call.

For several seconds I stand with the phone in my hand while the room shifts back into place around me.

Dress.

Bouquet.

Earrings.

Face in the mirror.

Mine.

Still mine.

Probably.

I put on the dress.

My hands hold steady until I fasten the earrings. Then they shake hard enough that it takes three tries.

The lipstick comes last. Rosewood pink.

I don’t think about Hannah’s bathroom drawer.

That’s a lie.

I think about it the whole time.

By the time I pick up the bouquet, my face in the mirror looks calm enough to be convincing.

A bride should look convincing, after all.

Paper eggs hang on the wall beside the clerk’s window even though Easter was five days ago. They hang crooked, one corner curling away from the beige paint.

Conor waits near the end of the hallway with his parents and the children.

He sees me first.

The expression that moves across his face nearly breaks me. Relief. Love. Awe. Underneath it all, a vulnerability I wasn’t prepared for.

His father clears his throat and sticks both hands in his pockets. Conor’s mother presses a tissue beneath one eye.

Waylen breaks from the group at a dead run. Tiny suit jacket flapping open. “Jo!”

He hits me around the waist hard enough to knock the air out of me. The bouquet survives by one aggressive grip.

“You look like a princess.”

Conor’s mother makes a tiny, wounded sound.

My heart hurts.

“Thank you.” I smooth Waylen’s hair back from his forehead. “You look extremely official.”

“I’m walking you.”

The words catch me off guard. “You are?”

“Dad said I could if you wanted.” His face shifts, worry crowding out the pride. “Do you want?”

Every adult in the hallway watches me not cry. “I’d love that.”

Waylen’s grin returns at full power.

Romy stands a few feet back in a yellow dress and white boots, arms crossed. Her hair hangs loose today, brushed smooth and shining beneath the courthouse lights.

She looks so much like Hannah I almost can’t breathe.

I cross the hallway toward her. The closer I get, the more her expression locks down. Defensive. Wounded. Trying not to be either.

I stop in front of her. “If you tell me to leave,” I say quietly, “I will.”

Her eyes widen.

Behind me, Conor makes a small sound.

I don’t look back.

This moment belongs to Romy.

And God help me, I mean what I said. If she tells me to go, I will walk out of this courthouse in my pale blue dress with my small bouquet and my borrowed courage and I will drive until I reach Cleveland and I will survive it because that’s what people do. They survive unbearable things. They just don’t always remain who they were before.

Romy looks at me for so long my pulse starts to hurt.

Her gaze drops to the bouquet. One white rose has shifted, bent at the stem.

She reaches out and fixes it with two careful fingers.

That’s all.

Just a small adjustment that leaves the bouquet whole again.

The breath leaves my lungs. “Thank you,” I whisper.

She looks away, jaw tight, tears shining in her eyes.

Thirteen years old and already learning that kindness can also be betrayal.

The ceremonial room has a stained-glass window nobody bothered to clean properly. A judge in a dark robe enters carrying a folder, and I can’t help wondering if he’s already married three couples and sentenced two shoplifters before lunch.

Waylen offers his elbow at an adorably high angle, his expression so solemn you’d think he was escorting royalty. I tuck my hand inside the bend.

Conor waits at the front of the room. No aisle, not really. Just carpet and chairs and fluorescent lights.

But Waylen walks me like we’re in a cathedral.

The ceremony lasts less than five minutes. I hear maybe half of it. Blake’s voice keeps threading through the judge’s words.

Hannah consulted a divorce attorney six days before she disappeared.

How does his wife leave her children?

Romy stands beside Conor’s parents, pale and watchful. Waylen beams like he personally arranged the universe. Conor never takes his eyes off me.

When the judge asks if I take this man, my heartbeat thunders so loudly I almost miss my cue.

“I do.”

Him and his children.

Conor’s voice is rough when he says his own.

His mother sobs openly. His father pretends to cough.

The judge pronounces us married with less ceremony than most people use to order lunch.

Conor kisses me. Gentle at first. Then not. One hand cups the back of my head while the other strokes my back, and for one second, the room disappears beneath the certainty of him.

My husband.

The word becomes real with terrifying permanence.

Waylen slams into both of us, arms around whatever parts he can reach. “You’re officially family now.”

Conor laughs against my hair.

I can’t.

Not yet.

Because “family” still has its teeth deep in me.

TWENTY

For seven days, I stop looking for danger.

Maybe that’s the real honeymoon.

The absence of vigilance.

Even if I’m sleeping with a murderer.

For one full week, I stop cataloging inconsistencies. Stop replaying Blake’s warnings. Stop analyzing every pause in Conor’s voice for hidden violence. I sleep beside him without wondering what Hannah saw during the final weeks before she vanished.

That’s more intimate than sex.

The trouble begins when we come home.

The return is warm in a way I didn’t expect, and that warmth is its own form of danger. Waylen launches himself at us hard enough to nearly knock Conor on his ass. Romy hangs near the porch pretending she isn’t smiling while the neighbor’s dog loses its mind barking at the excitement. Conor’s mother stocked the refrigerator before we arrived. I suspect feeding people is the Southern equivalent of therapy.

For two days, I let myself believe this might actually work.

My toothbrush already lives in the upstairs bathroom. My shampoo sits beside Hannah’s old bottle in the shower. My coffee mug migrated to the other side of Conor’s in the cabinet weeks ago without either of us acknowledging it. Our life has been assembling itself quietly around us, which means practical things eventually have to happen.

Furniture.

Closet space.

Reality.

The first time I bring it up, Conor kisses me before I finish the sentence, standing at the kitchen sink rinsing strawberries, his arms around my waist, his mouth at my neck before I reach the word “dresser.”

The second time, he starts unbuttoning my jeans the moment I mention moving boxes.

After a while, I recognize the strategy.

Tonight, I decide not to let him redirect me again.

Humming to the pop songs drifting down from Romy’s room, I load leftovers into glass containers. Waylen fell asleep twenty minutes ago, sprawled sideways across his bed with every light on. Romy disappeared upstairs after volleyball practice, muttering about algebra and the oppressive nature of public education.

Conor stands at the counter scrolling his phone while I stack containers in the refrigerator.

Domestic. Ordinary.

My husband.

The word is still foreign.

“I was thinking the couch could go into the den.”

“What couch?”

Seriously?

“The couch in my townhouse.”

His expression shifts almost too fast to track before smoothing over again.

I close the refrigerator and wait.

He sets the phone down and crosses to me, that small “I want you” smile already at the corner of his mouth.

Here we are…the redirect.

His hands slide around my waist. “You smell good.”

I keep my hands at my sides. “Conor.”

“Did you use the lotion from the resort?”

“Conor.”

His hands move to my breasts. “You’re very bossy since becoming my wife.”

“And you’ve been avoiding this conversation since becoming my husband.”

One beat. Two.

“I’m not avoiding it.”

“You’ve kissed me into silence twice to avoid it.”

A short laugh escapes him. “I did not kiss you into silence.”

“Debatable.”

He kisses me anyway, slow enough that my knees threaten betrayal.

I press both palms against his chest before the moment slides sideways again. “I’m serious.”

Something changes. Tiny but immediate. A wire tightening beneath the surface.

“I know.”

“Then talk to me.”

He looks away. Toward the hallway. Toward the stairs. Anywhere but my face.

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want to know where my furniture goes.” It’s a perfectly reasonable request. “I want to know what you want me to do with Hannah’s clothes, because I need closet space.”

Silence settles around my shoulders.

Anger crosses his face as he turns on his heel. “We can talk about this later.”

He walks from the kitchen before I can answer.

Seriously? Men commit ninety-two percent of violent crime and still can’t survive one uncomfortable conversation with a woman.

After a few minutes, I follow him.

The office door stands open a few inches. Conor sits behind the desk with his elbows braced on his knees and a crystal tumbler loose in one hand.

A bottle of Johnnie Walker sits beside a can of breath mints on the corner of the desk.

Every nerve in my body tightens.

The fresh mint on his breath when he kissed me. The slight delay in his responses tonight. The unusual quietness. The faint flush beneath his skin.

Oh no.

“You’ve been drinking.”

A rough, humorless laugh. “Observant.”

In all the months I’ve known him, I’ve never once seen him drink more than sweet tea or coffee.

“How much have you had?”

He tosses the rest back and kicks the desk drawer shut. “Depends. How much counts as too much?”

“You told me you don’t drink anymore.”

He throws up both hands. “It’s one drink, okay? Get off my back.”

He says it loud enough that I take a step toward the door.

And because I refuse to run from danger, I take two steps forward.

“What made you want to drink tonight?”

He throws his head back and covers his face with both hands. “Gee, Dr. Slater, I’m not sure.” His fingers drag down his face. “Maybe it’s my nagging wife.”

“Conor, I’m not sure⁠—”

He stands so fast the desk chair slams into the bookshelf behind him. “Listen, Hannah, I don’t want to do this now.”

Anger flares. “I’m not Hannah.” I take another step forward. “And you’re doing it now.”

The second the words leave my mouth, I know they’re wrong. His face changes in a way I’ve trained myself to recognize and should have avoided provoking.

I’ve spent enough years around people in crisis to read escalation before it fully arrives.

That doesn’t stop me.

“I asked one question about closet space.”

“You asked about her clothes.”

“She’s gone.” The words come out quieter than I intend.

He laughs. Worse this time.

“She’s everywhere.” He reaches for the bottle and pours another glass nearly to the rim. Drinks half in one swallow.

My pulse climbs. “Conor, stop.”

He finishes the rest. “You wanted honesty.”

I cross the room and take the bottle from him.

The reaction is instant. The tumbler leaves his hand so fast I barely track the movement before it explodes against the built-in shelves.

Liquor sprays across framed photographs as the glass shatters. One frame crashes to the hardwood.

Neither of us moves.

Conor’s face drains. “Oh my God.” He drops to his knees beside the shattered frame.

The cracked glass split directly across a photograph of him and Hannah on some beach, both laughing at something outside the frame.

Blood beads across his palm when he grabs for it. “Shit.”

I kneel beside him. My training kicks in before fear can catch up. “Don’t touch it.” I grab tissues from the desk and press them into his hand.

The office door bursts open.

Waylen freezes first. Then Romy. Both in pajamas. Both staring at the mess on the floor.

“What happened?” Waylen sounds so small.

I answer before Conor can. “Glass broke, buddy. That’s all.”

Romy scans the room and locks onto the bottle on the desk.

Everything in her face changes.

She isn’t surprised.

Tears fill her eyes as she reaches for Waylen’s shoulder. “Come on.”

“But Dad⁠—”

“Now. You can sleep with me.” Her sharpness startles him into motion.

She doesn’t look at Conor again while pulling her brother from the room.

The door shuts.

Silence crashes down behind it.

Romy knew. Not all the details. But enough.

Conor sits slumped beside the desk with bloody tissues clenched in one hand, grief moving off him in waves.

“I think I should go home tonight.”

His head jerks up. “No.”

“If this is too much⁠—”

“No.”

“You’re upset.”

He grabs my arm. “I said no.”

The force behind it sends a knife through me. I rise to my feet and step back. “Conor.”

He buries his face in both hands. When he speaks, the words are muffled enough that I almost miss them. “I tried to get rid of it.”

“What?”

“I tried to fix it.”

My heartbeat stumbles. “Fix what?”

“She wouldn’t stay.” His shoulders drop. “I told her if she walked out that door everything would fall apart and she just⁠—”

The unfinished sentence hangs in the room.

My brain completes it in the worst possible direction. Every version I construct ends the same way.

My skin goes cold. “I’m going home.”

He reaches for me as he staggers to his feet and momentum carries us both sideways. My back hits the rug hard enough to knock breath from my lungs.

Then he’s on me, pinning me against the rug.

“Conor—”

“Don’t.” He presses his forehead to mine. The alcohol rolls off him. His hands move up my arms, over my shoulders and close around my throat.

Not squeezing.

They just linger there.

Fear detonates through me so completely that the room sharpens into something hyper-real—the texture of the rug beneath me, the pressure of his hands and the fact that I can’t move and he isn’t moving and I’m afraid to breathe.

Recognition hits him.

I watch it dawn on his face. Watch him see what his hands are doing. Watch the horror move through him faster than the alcohol can slow it.

His hands jerk away and plant on either side of my head. “Don’t look at me like that.” His voice cracks. “Please don’t look at me like that.”

Thunder rattles the window panes. Pipes groan through the walls.

The whole house listening.

To sounds it’s heard before?

“I’m not Hannah.” The words leave me before I can stop them.

“I know.” His face drops against my shoulder. “I know.” He begins to shake. “Please don’t leave me too.”

His grip loosens, but he doesn’t move off me. I push at his shoulders until there’s enough space to inhale.

“I loved her.” The confession scrapes out raw and ugly. “Even when she hated me. Even when she looked at me like I was ruining her life every time I walked into a room.”

Tears burn my eyes.

“She said she couldn’t breathe in this house anymore.” His fingers flex against the rug beside my head. “And now you’re talking about moving her out of closets like she never existed.”

Part of me understands why that’s unbearable.

Another part of me is calculating the distance to the door.

But upstairs, two children are carrying too much grief already.

If I leave now, what happens to them? What happens to Romy, who already watches doorways like women disappear from them? What happens to Waylen, who still launches himself into my arms like trust is the simplest thing in the world?

Conor lifts his head. Eyes bloodshot. Face wrecked. “I’m sorry.”

I believe he means it.

That might be the scariest part.

TWENTY-ONE

The next morning, everyone pretends nothing happened.

Which may be the most reliable ritual human families ever invented.

Conor goes to work with a bandage wrapped around his palm. Romy eats half a piece of toast while refusing to look at him. Waylen asks if the broken picture can be fixed, and Conor tells him yes with such careful gentleness that I have to look away.

Nobody mentions the bottle.

Nobody mentions me on the office floor beneath my husband while thunder shook the windows and his hands closed around my throat.

I pack lunches for the kids. Conor kisses Waylen’s hair before he leaves. Romy steps around him before he can do the same to her. His face tightens. She doesn’t look back.

By 7:45 a.m., the house is empty.

The silence isn’t peaceful.

I stand in the kitchen listening to the hum of the refrigerator and the tick of the wall clock near the pantry. Morning light moves across the countertops. A cereal bowl sits in the sink. Waylen’s backpack hook swings gently next to the mudroom door from where he yanked his jacket free too fast.

A family house with no real place for me.

My suitcase sits open in the spare bedroom. Most of my clothes remain folded inside moving boxes along the wall, labeled in black marker.

My wedding dress hangs from the spare closet door in a plastic garment bag because that closet is packed with Christmas wrapping paper, old board games and two bins of clothing Waylen outgrew three years ago.

His first wife’s clothes live in the primary closet.

Mine live in cardboard.

The anger arrives with a clarity that surprises me.

I married him. I left my townhouse half packed and my life half dismantled. I stood in front of his children in a courthouse and let Waylen walk me toward his father like we were building something sacred.

And my clothes are still wrinkling in boxes while Hannah Slater’s hang in climate-controlled peace.

Each step toward the primary bedroom strips away another layer of self-control. By the time I reach the door, all that’s left is fury.

Conor’s side is sparse and functional. Hannah’s side is different.

Her dresses are grouped by color. Her shoes in clear boxes with photographs on the fronts. Scarves hang on a circular organizer. There’s a pale raincoat with a smudge near the cuff. A dry-cleaning tag is still stapled to a navy dress.

My anger grows rancid as I step inside the shrine.

Because Hannah had all of this. The clothes and the children and the husband and the house. The family. The mug in the cabinet and the groceries on the list and the creak on the third stair. She had the life I wanted so badly it rearranged my ethics.

And she was trying to leave it.

Today, the uncertainty of what happened to her isn’t abstract.

It’s personal.

I shut the drawer too hard. The sound cracks through the closet.

Good.

Maybe I’m allowed to be ugly again. And I know what I must do next.

Rushing downstairs, I stop behind the desk chair, my pulse lifting at what I’m about to do.

If a man pins his wife to the office floor a week after marrying her, she gets to look through his computer.

The password screen glows awake. A few failed attempts later, I remember Gatlinburg. Conor’s ten-minute rant about the cabin’s Wi-Fi. Sixteen characters. Two symbols. Passwords stored in patterns.

The desktop opens and folders line the screen.

Case Logs. Taxes. Kids. House.

Hannah - Missing.

I click, and the folder contains reports, media files, phone records, timelines. I open the one labeled Airport.

Grainy security footage fills the screen. Then she appears. Purple zip-up hoodie. “Mom Life” stitched over the chest. “Romy” and “Waylen” running down one sleeve. Khaki capris. Canvas sneakers. Baseball cap pulled low. Thick-framed glasses. A carry-on rolling behind her.

She moves through the Atlanta airport without ever looking up.

The police accepted this as proof. The judge accepted it. The state of Tennessee looked at this woman and decided Hannah Slater had chosen to leave the children whose names she was wearing.

I watch it three times.

She looks like a woman trying not to be recognized. Or a woman who was told how.

I close the video.

The Notes folder contains timelines, interviews, names, observations.

Esme K. remains convinced foul play. Emotional. Hostile toward me. No factual basis.

A woman screaming outside the DA’s office reduced to a few words and a professional conclusion by the man she was screaming about.

The goodbye note sits in the next file.

I can’t do this anymore. I need air. Don’t look for me.

I stare at the words until they stop looking like words.

I leave the office. I need a different room to breathe in.

Hannah’s office sits at the end of the upstairs hallway, although nobody calls it that anymore.

The shelves hold photo albums, scrapbooks and labeled boxes for birthdays, vacations and school.

Proof she existed.

I pull down the first album. Waylen’s baby book. Hannah in a hospital bed holding a newborn. Conor bent over them both, younger and stunned with joy.

The next pages come faster.

Pumpkin patches. School plays. Birthday cakes. Kitchen counters dusted with flour. Ordinary moments preserved with obsessive care.

Proof of love. Proof she was here before me in every way that mattered.

A DVD labeled Waylen 2nd Birthday sits beside the albums.

The video flickers to life.

Spring sunlight fills the screen to reveal a playground. Little Waylen refuses to come down a slide.

Hannah laughs somewhere behind the camera. “Come here, baby. Mommy’s arms are empty.”

The words hit like a physical blow.

Asher.

A Tuesday in October, three years ago. One wrong step off a curb at the grocery store entrance, her foot finding nothing where the pavement should have been. The sound her body made as she hit the ground. Not pain yet. Something before pain. Knowledge arriving through the body before the mind could catch up.

The hospital was bright and loud. Voices moved fast around her. Nurses who wouldn’t quite meet her eyes. A doctor speaking to Luke in the hallway. His expression.

The monitor. The wand moving across her belly. The technician’s face going careful and still. The awful silence where a heartbeat should have been.

Waking. A ceiling she didn’t recognize. The noisy silence in a recovery room. Knowing before the nurse crossed toward her. Knowledge arriving through the body before the mind could catch up.

He was wrapped in a striped hospital blanket. They had bathed him and dressed him in a white cotton sleeper with tiny snaps. He weighed almost nothing and everything. She held him until her arms shook and then she held him longer because there was no version of putting him down that she could make herself believe in.

Luke’s face across the room. The grief of watching someone you love understand that the thing that broke you has broken them too, and that love isn’t enough to survive what loss does to two people standing in the same wreckage.

She learned about the hysterectomy later. After the pain medication had worn down enough that the words could reach her. A doctor. A sterile room. Luke in the hallway getting coffee. Just her and the ceiling and the information delivered clinically, the final item in a long list of her body’s betrayals.

My finger freezes on the spacebar. The image locks on Hannah’s outstretched arms.

“What are you doing?”

Jolting, I turn to find Romy in the doorway, pale and furious. Conor’s behind her. His gaze moves from me to the open albums. The video. The drawer I forgot to close.

His face shuts.

Romy marches past me to the desk. “Those are private.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.” Tears pool and spill. “You don’t know anything.”

“I wanted to understand.”

Romy stares at me. “Understand what?” Her voice cracks. “How to be her?”

The question is a knife.

“You said you wouldn’t make him forget her.”

“I’m not trying to.”

“Then why are you in here going through her stuff?”

Because I needed proof. Because I needed answers. Because I don’t know where Hannah ends and I begin anymore.

“I hate you.”

Romy turns and runs. The bedroom door slams.

Silence settles over the room. I look at Conor. He doesn’t yell. Somehow that’s worse.

He begins putting everything away. The albums and videos go back into the drawers. Careful hands restoring order.

“Conor.”

“Not right now.”

I stand there while he puts Hannah’s life back where I found it.

At the doorway he pauses. “Give Romy space.”

“I’m sorry.” I hate myself for saying it.

He sighs. “Guess we’re all just doing our best.”

Sometimes our best is still the thing that ruins the ones you love.

TWENTY-TWO

By the second week of May, I’ve learned that a house can reject a person without making a sound.

No slammed doors or broken glass or raised voices necessary. Just Romy glaring at me over the breakfast table. Waylen checking his sister’s face before reaching for my hand. Conor brushing his hand across the small of my back when he passes through the kitchen, and me never knowing whether the touch is forgiveness or muscle memory.

He’s kind to me. That may be the worst part. Kind is harder to fight than anger.

My clothes are still in boxes. My furniture is still in the townhouse. The spare closet holds someone else’s wrapping paper and board games while Hannah’s wardrobe sits undisturbed in the primary bedroom. I tell myself I’ll call movers. I don’t.

At work it’s no better. Group B knows something is wrong with me. They’re women who’ve survived dangerous people, which means they’re exceptionally good at reading a room. I lose track of a patient mid-sentence one Friday morning and find I’ve written the same word three times on my notepad.

House. House. House.

Amanda tells me I look lonely. Cathy asks if he hurt me. I say “no” too fast and the lie passes, but only barely.

Mark Holloway stops by my office after lunch. Closes the door. Tells me the patients are worried, the staff too, that my documentation is still excellent but I’m not present the way I usually am. He offers to take my caseload for a while. I decline before he finishes the sentence because more time at the house means more silence, more boxes, more evenings beneath the portrait with Conor’s hand resting open on the sheet between us.

“If you need to talk to someone outside this building,” he says at the door, “do that before you convince yourself you don’t.”

After Mark leaves, I sit with the phone in my hand.

Conor is the person I married. Blake is the person I ignored. My family is gone. The friends I had before belong to the life I dismantled to build this one.

And Esme.

Esme is Hannah’s best friend, which makes her impossible.

Which may also make her the only person left who understands what it means to love children who aren’t yours and still feel responsible for their survival.

I pick up my phone.

Esme answers on the second ring. “Jo?”

She sounds so startled I almost hang up.

“Hi.”

“Are you okay?”

That question has become unbearable. “No.”

For once, she doesn’t attack. “What happened?”

“I need advice.”

“From me?”

“I know.”

“About Conor?”

“About Romy.”

That changes the silence. It shifts with an intake of breath, a woman rearranging her assumptions fast enough to keep up.

“She hates me.”

A gentle laugh. “She doesn’t hate you.”

“She said she hates me.”

“She’s thirteen. Hate comes and goes at that age.”

Despite myself, a laugh escapes. It hurts. “Fair.”

“What happened?”

I look at the framed degree on my office wall. “I crossed a boundary. With Hannah. I went through some of her things. Photo albums. Videos.” My throat tightens. “Romy walked in.”

Esme inhales sharply.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

I’d rather have her anger than the gentleness in the question. “I’m trying to.”

“Why would you do that?”

Because Hannah is everywhere. Because my clothes are still in boxes. Because Conor frightened me. Because the woman in the airport never showed her face. Because I don’t know whether I married a grieving man or a dangerous one.

Please tell me you understand.

“Because I’m lost.”

The truth settles between us. Ugly in its plainness.

“That house will do that.” Esme’s voice softens.

A chill moves across my arms. “What?”

“Hannah used to say it tried to swallow her.”

Goose bumps appear. “Swallow?”

“Not literally,” Esme adds quickly. “She just…she said it sometimes. When she was overwhelmed. That the house needed too much. The kids, the routines, the expectations, Conor’s job, his moods, his mother’s opinions. She said some days it seemed like the house wanted to eat her alive.”

Conor’s voice rises in memory. “She said she couldn’t breathe in this house anymore.”

Hannah. Esme. Conor. All circling the same truth from different directions.

“Romy asked me not to make him forget her,” I say quietly.

Esme goes silent. The kind of silence that means pain has found its mark.

“She said that?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Romy.”

The love in her voice almost undoes me.

“I don’t know how to fix this.”

“You probably can’t.”

The answer is so immediate and honest that tears sting my eyes. “That’s not helpful.”

“It’s true. Romy lost her mother without getting to bury her. There’s no five stages of grief for that.”

“She looks at me like I’m stealing from her.”

“Are you?”

I flinch.

Esme doesn’t apologize. Good. Maybe I need someone who won’t.

“I don’t want to.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

The question lingers.

I think of Hannah’s purple hoodie in the airport footage. Romy and Waylen stitched down the sleeve. A mother wearing her children’s names while walking away from them. I think of my boxes in the spare room. Waylen’s arms. Romy’s face. Conor’s hands holding me close.

“I love them.”

“I know.”

“You don’t sound like that helps.”

“Love can make people selfish too.”

That should offend me, but it doesn’t. It’s less an accusation than diagnosis.

“What do I do?”

“Give her time. Stop touching Hannah’s things. Let Romy be angry without trying to make the anger disappear because it makes you feel guilty.”

“And if time doesn’t work?”

“Unless you can bring Hannah back, time is all you’ve got.”

The sentence enters me like a parasite.

Almost gently.

Then everything inside me goes still.

Esme keeps talking, but my mind is still caught on one sentence. Everything after that reaches me as though she’s speaking through water.

Unless you can bring Hannah back.

Romy can’t grieve what she can’t bury. Waylen is learning to hesitate before love because the woman he loved most disappeared without explanation.

They need an ending.

Bring Hannah back.

“I’ll give her time,” I say when Esme pauses long enough that an answer is required.

“Good.” Relief softens her voice. “That’s the right thing.”

The right thing. What a flexible phrase.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

No. I’m standing in an office where my patients can see loneliness on my face, married to a man who frightens me, loved by a little boy I may lose, hated by a girl whose mother’s life still occupies every room I enter.

But something has changed.

Find her.

“I’m better now.”

And this time, I almost mean it.

I sit with the phone in my lap after we hang up. Voices drift past my office door. A phone rings down the hall. Someone laughs. Life keeps moving, even though I’m slowly unraveling.

I look at the framed degree on the wall.

Jo Adair. Doctor of Medicine.

I’ve survived things before. I’ve found the one thread that, pulled correctly, changed everything.

The children need closure. The children deserve an answer they can build a life around.

I think about what that might look like.

I think about it for a long time.

By the time I pick up my bag and turn off the office light, something has settled in me that wasn’t there this morning.

I can’t label it as peace, or even happiness.

Direction. Yes. That’s what has my pulse jumping and my energy high.

And it’s the most dangerous thing I’ve felt in my entire life.

TWENTY-THREE

The bags cut into my fingers.

I welcome the pain.

Outside the narrow window at the end of the hallway, downtown Chattanooga presses hot and bright against the afternoon. My blouse sticks between my shoulder blades. I parked three blocks away because every close spot was taken and walking gave me time to think.

Not about whether I should do this—that question died somewhere around noon when I was still searching with gloved hands and a certainty so clear it frightened me—but about how to do it without falling apart before I finished.

I’m wrecked. I know I look it. I haven’t slept, haven’t eaten anything I can remember, didn’t bother changing out of my dirty clothes. None of that matters.

Find her.

I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours repeating those two words over and over.

The uncertainty inside that family has become its own form of violence. Every room bends around Hannah’s absence. Every conversation curves back toward her eventually.

They all need closure. I do too.

People cannot heal inside a wound that never closes.

I understand that now.

I lift my free hand to knock. The door opens before my knuckles land.

Blake stops short in the doorway with his jacket folded over one arm, tie loose at his throat, a surprised smile on his mouth. He takes in the bags first. Then my face. His expression does something complicated.

“Jo.”

I hold the plastic tighter. “I need to show you something.”

Every trace of fatigue disappears from him. “Come inside.”

The blinds are half open behind his desk, striping late afternoon light across stacked files and legal pads dense with small black handwriting. He sets his jacket over the chair and watches me place the bags on his desk.

I remain standing.

If I sit, I may not get back up again.

He takes a single step toward me. “You look terrible.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t an insult.”

“I know.”

The bag crackles when I reach inside. I pull the clothes free one piece at a time, setting each one down with care. The purple hoodie, “Mom Life” arched across the left breast, “Romy” and “Waylen” running down the right sleeve in block letters. Khaki capris with a dark stain near the hem. The matching baseball cap. The thick-framed glasses.

The clothing Hannah Slater wore the day she walked through Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport and disappeared.

Blake goes completely still.

The room loses sound for a moment.

“Where did you get these?”

“A storage unit.”

He stares at them. Understanding crosses his face slowly, and then all at once. What comes after it is worse than both.

“I don’t believe it.”

I wrap my arms around myself.

Blake pulls latex gloves from his desk drawer and lifts the hoodie with both hands. His thumb moves over the stitched names on the sleeve, and his jaw tightens in a way that tells me he’s working very hard to stay inside professional language right now.

“Hannah wore this to the airport.”

“Yes.”

“You’re certain.”

“Yes.”

He sets it down. “You know what this means.”

“I tried so hard to make this be something else.” The words come out quieter than I intend, and that’s fine. That’s better. “I thought grief and fear were making me paranoid, that I was building a case out of instincts and suspicion because some part of me needed a reason for everything that scared me about him. I wanted so very badly to believe Hannah left.” My throat tightens. “I wanted it badly enough that…” I can’t finish. I don’t need to.

Blake knows.

“People don’t leave their children like that.” I look up at him finally. “Not when they’re wearing their names stitched into their sleeve.”

Emotion moves across his face. It’s controlled, settling in his jaw and eyes without ever reaching his voice.

He believes me.

I knew he would.

That knowledge sits in my chest right beside the guilt, and I don’t try to separate them.

“You married him anyway.” It isn’t an accusation. Something closer to grief.

“Yes.”

Blake drags a hand through his hair and steps away from the desk as though proximity to the clothes physically burns him. “Jo, I told you before the wedding that⁠—”

“I know what you told me.”

“I don’t think you do.” He turns toward the window, jaw working. “Because you were frightened of him less than two months ago and you still went through with it.”

“I’m frightened now.”

He turns back. “Then why did you stay?”

Because I love him. Because I love those children more. Because I sat down in a chair that still had someone else’s shape worn into it and believed, eventually, it would one day fit me too. Because I believed I could hold that family together through nothing but stubborn proximity and enough care to outlast the damage already done.

“Someone needed to stay with those kids.” It’s the truest version of every answer I have.

Blake closes his eyes.

When he opens them, there’s no argument left. He crosses the office in four steps and pulls me against his chest, one hand at the back of my head. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.

I close my eyes.

I allow myself ten seconds of this. Ten seconds to take exactly what’s being offered.

On the eleventh second, I straighten and step back.

His hands fall to his sides.

“Honey trap.” He says it like he’s been carrying the word since the morning of my wedding.

“Blake, I⁠—”

“You walked into that house because you thought he’d killed her. You married him because…” He stops. Starts again. His throat moves. “Because you needed to know.”

I don’t confirm it. I don’t deny it. I hold his gaze and let him arrive at whatever version he needs.

“This wasn’t some plan from the beginning?” He asks it quietly, and there’s hope underneath.

“I don’t know anymore.” The words come without hesitation, because the plan changed so many times it barely deserves a name. “I didn’t plan Romy. Or Waylen.” My voice nearly breaks on it. “I didn’t plan any of that.”

Blake nods slowly, and I wonder if he’ll carry this answer for a long time.

He reaches for the phone on his desk.

“What are you doing?”

“What I should’ve done a long time ago.”

Ice moves through me. Not for myself. For Conor. For Romy. For Waylen. For the house. For the fragile, cracking ordinary life of it.

“Blake.”

He pauses on the third button. “What?”

“Don’t let the kids see.”

He holds my gaze for a long moment before nodding. “I won’t.”

He finishes dialing, and I stare at the clothes spread across his desk. Outside the window, downtown Chattanooga goes on being hot and bright and completely indifferent to what I’ve set in motion.

The ballroom’s crystal chandeliers throw warm light across white linen while a jazz trio plays beneath banners celebrating the Sweetwater Law Enforcement Foundation.

Waylen’s small fingers are twisting my wedding ring around my finger in slow, bored rotations. He’s been doing it so long I’ve stopped feeling it.

Romy sits to his left, arms crossed, jaw set, radiating a fury so consistent it’s almost become part of her DNA. She muttered something about hating this stupid thing when the mayor got his applause twenty minutes ago, and I chose to count it as progress.

Rose and Stanley flank my right, both beaming.

At the front of the room, Conor stands near the podium. The smile he gives the moderator is warm and practiced and so familiar by now that it lands differently than it used to. I know its timing. I know the slight adjustment he makes right before the room laughs at something he’s said. I know the controlled repositioning of his stance when the attention turns emotional rather than celebratory.

I know too many things now.

Chief Jenners takes the microphone. “The Sweetwater Police Department is proud to⁠—”

“Detective Slater, did you kill your wife?”

The question detonates from the back of the room. Every head turns. Esme Kincaid pushes through two uniformed officers near the entrance with her phone raised, already recording.

I did this.

I reach for Waylen before the thought finishes forming. His fingers close around mine. Romy’s hand finds my sleeve on the other side, and the confusion and fear on their faces nearly take my breath.

I did this.

The room fragments. More reporters. More questions. Cameras swinging. Officers surging. Chairs scraping back across the floor while Conor goes still at the front of the room in the way I recognize now—the assessing stillness, calculating the landscape.

I put myself between the children and the chaos and start moving. Rose and Stanley follow.

The reporters change targets before we reach the hall, and the questions they throw at me directly scorch my back as we burst through the door.

In the hall, the silence is almost violent. I crouch in front of them both and say the words I need to say. Waylen’s chin wobbles. Romy’s face goes carefully, furiously still. I send them toward the vending machines with their grandparents so they don’t see what’s about to happen.

The door bursts open, and I can barely watch the way he is with his children. Rose and Stanley took them away. I don’t breathe again until they round the corner.

Then Conor’s hands are on my face. “You know I didn’t kill Hannah, right?”

Instead of answering, I press my cheek against his chest one last time.

He holds me closer.

I close my eyes.

The same darkness behind my eyelids. The same muffled sound of someone else’s heartbeat against my ear. Different man. Different chest. Different everything, except the closing of the eyes and the letting go. I notice that, but I don’t examine it too closely, because I simply can’t.

I squeeze him one second longer. Hang on to this final moment of being the detective’s wife.

And let go.

When I step back, Blake Graves is already walking toward us from the far end of the hallway. Badge at his belt. Expression professionally emptied of everything he must be feeling. He told me it would be tonight. After the ceremony. Public enough that Conor wouldn’t risk making a scene. Private enough that the children wouldn’t someday find it online.

Conor follows my gaze and goes still.

The confusion on his face is terrible and genuine. He looks at Blake, then back at me, reading something in my expression he hasn’t seen before. Or maybe he’s been reading it for weeks and only now understands what it means.

Blake stops a few feet away.

“Conor Slater.” He lifts his badge. “I need you to come with me.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Amanda watches me enter her room with open suspicion.

That’s okay.

Suspicion is healthier than sedation. Especially today.

Morning light filters through the narrow, reinforced window near the ceiling. A cup of untouched water sits beside her hand. A gray cardigan hangs from her shoulders with a looseness that wasn’t there even a couple days ago, the medication reduction doing its slow, careful work.

Not all the fog.

Just enough.

She tracks my movement as I pull the chair close and sit. No nurse waits outside the door today. There’s no syringe loaded and ready. That was my call, signed off on my own authority. I made it without losing a moment of sleep.

Everything from this point forward belongs to me.

Amanda grips her cup so hard her knuckles turn white. “You changed my meds.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Because I need you present for what I’m about to do to you.

“Because I want to talk to you clearly.”

She studies me the way she’s been studying me for weeks, that unsettled recognition that never quite resolves into anything she can name. “You look different today.”

The observation moves through me like a cold finger pressed between my ribs. “So do you.”

A flicker of irritation crosses her face. Good. Emotion means traction, and traction means we can finally move.

I fold my hands in my lap. “Tell me about your childhood.”

Amanda blinks. “What?”

“Your parents. What were they like?”

“They’re dead.”

“I know. What were they like before that?”

She leans back in the chair, shoulders pulling in with reflexive wariness. “My mother cared too much what people thought.”

“And your father?”

“He stayed out of things mostly.” She picks at a cuticle. “Which was its own kind of problem.”

“You had a sister.”

The wariness sharpens into something more alert. “Yes.”

“Tell me about her.”

Amanda picks up the water and doesn’t drink it. The medication reduction has started breaking apart the flatness around her eyes, and I can see her thinking now in a way I couldn’t before. She’s assembling the question she wants to ask me and deciding, for the moment, to answer mine instead.

“Anna was…” She sets the cup down. “She needed a lot.”

“What does that mean?”

“She was emotional. She wanted attention constantly. Reassurance. She’d fall apart over the smallest things.” Amanda shrugs with a casualness that doesn’t fully reach her expression. “I never really knew how to be around her.”

“That must have been exhausting.”

“It was.”

“For you.”

Amanda glances up at the flatness in my tone. “What does that mean?”

I keep my face open. Professional. “I’m curious what it was like for her. Standing beside you her whole life.” I pause. “Being compared constantly. Being the awkward one. The needy one. The one people barely noticed because you were so easy to look at.”

Amanda’s expression shifts. “I can’t help what I looked like.”

“No.” I let that sit for a moment. “But you could help some of the rest of it.”

“Such as.”

I hold her gaze. “The scissors.”

Amanda goes very still. The water cup begins to tremble in her hand. “What?”

“The night before school pictures. When Anna was asleep.”

The color leaves her face so completely and so fast that I watch it happen like a light switching off. She stares at me. The cup lowers to the table without her seeming to decide to set it down.

“Where did you…” She stops. Starts again. “How do you know that?”

The clinician in me catalogs the moment. Memory retrieval through emotional association. The body knowing before the mind. I’ve published papers on this exact mechanism, and I’m sitting inside one right now. I feel nothing that resembles clinical detachment.

“She told you that.” Amanda says it almost to herself. “Someone told you that.”

“No one told me.”

Amanda’s eyes move over my face with a slow, painstaking attention she hasn’t given me before. This is no unfocused drifting of heavy sedation or the wary tracking of a woman in an unfamiliar place. This is older. This is her mind trying to climb up through seventeen years and medication and whatever was done to her before she arrived here.

“I don’t understand what’s happening.” But her voice says otherwise. Some part of her has already started to understand and is terrified of finishing the thought.

I lean forward. “You’re right about one thing.”

She’s breathing so hard I can hear it. “What?”

I keep my voice low and even, the same voice I use in courtrooms and crisis rooms and across bolted tables from dangerous men. “Your name isn’t Amanda.”

Her eyes widen.

The air-conditioning hum disappears.

She stares at me with her mouth slightly open and her hand flat on the table and seventeen years of distance in her eyes. I watch the fog and the medication and the intervening time all fight to hold the door shut against something that is pushing from the other side with everything it has.

I give her a moment.

“Your name is Hannah.” My voice doesn’t waver, even though my heart is pounding. “Hannah Fox Slater.”

She doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink.

The recognition arrives in pieces, each one landing and reshaping the face slightly before the next one comes. I’ve sat across from people recovering lost memories before. I know what it looks like from the outside.

I’ve never been the thing they’re recovering it toward.

“And I’m your sister.”

PART TWO

HANNAH

TWENTY-FIVE

“What the hell happened in there?”

The voice crashes through the darkness.

This one is female. She’s frightened. But not of me. Frightened for me, which is different, and I understand this even now, even through whatever keeps dragging me under.

Hands pin my arms against a mattress while leather tightens around my wrists. I fight automatically, my back arching hard enough that pain streaks through my shoulders.

“No—”

The word barely works. My tongue’s too big for my mouth. Wrong. The room tilts sideways.

Another hand catches my ankle.

“Hold still, Amanda.”

Amanda.

The name skids through my head and disappears before I can grab it.

“She’s overloaded.” The psychiatrist. Jo. No, not her. Where is she? “Ease up on the restraints.”

“The hell I will.” The nurse. Denise. They’ve argued before. “You want to tell me what you said to her?”

A needle burns into my thigh.

“Too fast⁠—”

“—medication reduction⁠—”

“—violent response⁠—”

The drug hits fast. Not enough to stop the panic. Enough to keep it from drawing breath.

The ceiling swims above me in pale, watery streaks. Fluorescent lights flicker overhead.

Psych hospital. Quiet room.

Amanda.

No.

The thought comes harder this time. Sharp enough to hurt.

Not Amanda. Not Amanda.

“Easy,” someone says.

My wrists hurt as I pull against the restraints.

Jo. Doctor Jo. Anna. Sister.

The word detonates somewhere deep inside me, and the room folds sideways.

Pageant lights explode white-hot behind my eyes.

Applause. Flowers. A rhinestone crown pressing into my scalp while cameras flash and my mother’s hands make a final adjustment to my sash—quick, proprietary, possessive. The way she touched my face and hair and posture all my life, as though I were something she’d built and needed to maintain.

“Smile, Hannah!”

Cameras everywhere. My mother fixing lipstick with spit on her thumb.

And backstage, past the sequins and the hairspray and the mothers pressing their daughters into their final shapes is Anna. Standing in the wings with a bunch of carnations too large for her arms, watching. Always watching with hateful little eyes.

I smiled for the cameras. I always smiled.

Anna watched.

The hospital room is back. The restraints. The ceiling.

Romy. Waylen.

The names arrive like oxygen after too long without it. I try to say them. I try to remember them for later.

Who are they?

Warm body against my chest, impossibly small. Tiny fingers opening and closing against my skin while I held my breath in the hospital bed because I’d never felt anything so fragile in my life and I was terrified of breaking it.

“Mommy’s arms are empty.”

Little-boy laughter. Waylen’s laugh. Enormous, unhinged, too big for his body.

“Fill them up, baby.”

And him launching across the kitchen at me hard enough to nearly knock me backward, arms locked around my neck, smelling of peanut butter and something sweet I could never identify.

Love so enormous it physically hurt.

Romy.

My first memory of Romy is screaming.

Not the birth—though that too—but later. Much later. Romy at four, running through the kitchen, and the thunk of impact and then a silence that was somehow worse than the screaming that followed. Her tiny hands covered in blood. My brain going offline while Conor scooped Romy up and moved.

Emergency room doors.

“She needs stitches.”

“I know that!”

“Look at me. Look at me. She’s okay.”

Conor’s hands framing my face in the waiting room. Steady. Sure. And me thinking this is what love looks like. This is a man who moves toward a crisis. I’ve believed that for years. I’ve told Esme that. I’ve told myself that on nights when something else was true.

The room tilts again.

I’m inside a church. White walls. Pale wood. Mom’s casket on the left. Or is it Dad’s? I can’t see the arrangement clearly. Both caskets in the same room because they died the same way, the same night, on the same wet road outside Jackson, Tennessee, and the funeral home had asked whether the family preferred one service or two. I said one without consulting anyone because there was only Anna, and Fatty Annie, Acne Annie, Whiny Annie wouldn’t know what to say.

I sobbed through the entire service.

That’s what I remember that day. The physical fact of weeping. I’d handled it like I did everything else—genuinely and completely—aware that the room was watching, that grief performed publicly was still grief, that both needed to be done.

Anna sat beside me in black and didn’t cry.

I kept glancing at her. Waiting for it. Desperate, in some animal way, for my sister to break open too so we could be inside the same thing for once. But Anna’s face stayed dry and still and so carefully composed she seemed carved from stone.

Like she was waiting for something to begin rather than end.

I reached for her hand when they started singing “Amazing Grace.” I remember that. I remember that Anna never took it.

Take my hand. Take it. Stop being scary and take it. Take⁠—

Another needle pushes into my arm.

Darkness rises fast this time. Thicker.

I fight it.

Scissors.

They’re there. And wouldn’t it be funny, my friends say? And snip snip snip.

Screams. Laughs. Baby Annie.

A cabin.

Cold wood beneath her bare feet. Panic clawing up my throat while I move through dark rooms, opening doors, the air wrong in some way I can’t locate. My own voice sounding strange.

“Hello?”

No answer.

Then…I’m on a road. Feet bleeding. Where am I? Headlights exploding, blinding, coming straight at me. I try to run. Blue lights. Red lights. Someone shouting.

Needles.

Always needles.

Doctors and nurses talking while I fight the oxygen mask strapped to my face. “She was heavily sedated when they found her on the road. She’s been fighting us since.”

Found.

The word catches. Found where? My thoughts slide apart before I can finish.

“Psych’s on their way.”

A church parking lot. Forty-three seconds alone while the kids are inside with the babysitter and the fundraising committee has started cleaning up without them and Conor’s mouth is warm against my throat.

“You smell like cupcake frosting.”

“Your son licked icing directly onto my shoulder.”

“Our son.”

A laugh pulls out of me before I can decide whether the day deserves one.

Then his hands on me in the kitchen, two years later, three years later. Steady. Sure. The same hands. And my own voice, very flat and very careful telling him to get away from me.

“Hannah, I didn’t⁠—”

“Don’t.”

The door opens.

“She’s coming back too fast.” Denise, I think.

I force my eyes to open and Jo’s over me, staring down at me. Pretty Annie. “Or she’s finally waking up.”

Denise beside her. “What did you say to her?”

“Nothing.”

The answer comes so quietly I almost miss it underneath the sound of my own breathing.

I’m sinking again. It feels like falling asleep—the edges softening, the distance growing between me and the ceiling above me and the voices and the restraints and the thing I almost remember about a pair of scissors in the dark.

But underneath all of it, below the drugs and the darkness and the fog, one thing keeps surfacing.

Jo. Anna.

Joanna.

Sister.

And my mother’s voice somewhere far away saying stand up straight, sweetheart. Beautiful girls are always being watched.

Conor watches me too.

They all do.

I sink.

The rhinestones press cold and real against my skull, even now.

TWENTY-SIX

The first crown I ever win sits on a shelf above my bed, the jewels sparkling under a light Mom installed just for it.

I’m seven when I come home from the Little Miss Madison County pageant with scratches on my scalp and my mother crying harder than anyone else in the room.

My weird little sister is standing on her tiptoes beneath that shelf, one hand braced against the wall, the other stretched toward the crown like she’s reaching for something holy.

“Don’t touch that.”

Anna jerks away, tucking her hands behind her back. “I wasn’t.”

“You were.”

Her fingers curl into her palm. She’s four years old, small for her age, dark hair sticking to one cheek, knees scabbed beneath a nightgown I outgrew two summers earlier. The hem drags around her feet.

“I only wanted to see it.”

“It’s mine.”

Anna has always been quiet in the wrong ways. Not shy quiet. Not sweet quiet. Watching quiet. Her lower lip trembles.

When Mom appears behind me, smelling like hairspray and cigarette smoke and the rose lotion she rubs into her hands every night before bed, Anna attempts to shrink into the wall.

“What’s all this fuss about?”

I glare at my sister. “She was touching my crown.”

Mom clucks her tongue. “Hannah Renee, don’t be ugly. Your sister’s just curious.”

Anna looks at her like a flower straining toward light.

Mom crouches, smoothing my hair first, then Anna’s. “Besides, you don’t need to be jealous.” Her thumb brushes Anna’s cheek. “I can already tell Joanna won’t have your beauty.”

Anna doesn’t understand every word. I do.

Mom smiles as if she’s handed both of us a gift. “But I think this little one might be the smart one. Won’t that be nice? One pretty girl and one smart girl.”

I look at Anna.

Anna looks at the crown.

For the first time, I understand that something can be given to me and taken from Anna in the exact same sentence. I don’t know what to do with that.

So I grab the crown from the shelf, clutch it to my chest and turn away.

Nine years later, I’m sitting in the dressing room at the Smoky Mountain Sweetheart Pageant, framed in the mirror’s yellow bulbs while Mom stands behind me with a comb in one hand and a can of spray in the other.

“Chin up.”

“I am.”

“Not enough.”

I lift my chin. I straighten until my spine aches.

At sixteen, I know better than to argue. I know what shade of lipstick makes my teeth look whitest. I know how to walk in heels across a stage without letting my hips swing too far. I know how to laugh as if every joke is new, every compliment surprising, every judge’s attention harmless.

I know beauty is not a thing a girl owns. It’s a job.

Beside the door, Anna sits in a folding chair with a paperback open across her lap. She’s thirteen now. Her hair hangs limp around her face. Acne burns across both cheeks. Her body has widened in places our mother pretends to ignore until she notices loudly.

Anna has one thumb tucked between the pages, but she isn’t reading. She’s watching.

Always watching.

A girl at the next mirror glances from me to Anna, then back again. Her snicker is hateful and aimed.

Mom beats me to any response with a bright laugh that somehow makes it worse. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? Same father, same mother, and God gave them completely different gifts.”

The other mothers smile. The girls relax. Anna turns a page I bet she hasn’t read.

I stare at my reflection, shame at war with irritation. Because Anna makes everything uncomfortable. She sits in corners and absorbs rooms until I can’t tell whether I want to protect her or shake her. Sometimes, I catch her looking at me with an expression so hungry it feels like an accusation.

I don’t know how to reach that kind of loneliness.

I also don’t try very hard. That truth sits beneath most of my memories like a stain.

“Hannah.” Mom snaps near my ear. “Smile.”

I smile.

The mirror gives me back exactly what everyone wants. Blonde curls. Bright eyes. Glossed lips. White teeth. A girl built carefully enough to pass inspection.

Behind me, Anna blurs in the glass. A shadow in a folding chair.

Watching.

Mom leans close. “If they ask about college, say design. University of Tennessee. Knoxville, not Chattanooga. Interior design. Not fashion. Fashion sounds frivolous.”

“I know.”

“And if they ask about family, say how blessed you are to have such a supportive one.”

My gaze flicks to Anna again.

Supportive. What a flexible word.

Anna looks up at the same moment. Our eyes meet in the mirror.

For one strange second, I remember the first time I held her. Not this Anna—not corners and acne and bitten nails and that strange watchful stillness. Baby Anna. I was three years old in a hospital room with squeaky floors. Our father lifted me onto the bed beside our mother and placed the baby in my arms.

“This is your baby sister, Joanna Ellen,” he said. “She’s yours too.”

Her face was red and wrinkled, mouth opening and closing in tiny furious shapes. But then one impossibly small finger curled around mine. A tight, shocking grip.

I stared down at her and thought that I’d never seen anything so beautiful. Not pretty. Not pageant pretty. Beautiful in a way that made me tell Mom and Dad I’d love her forever.

The memory flickers out beneath another blast of hairspray.

A woman with a headset calls the first group to line up.

I stand and smooth both hands down the pale blue gown Mom drove to Nashville to buy. Anna watches the dress.

“You look pretty.”

The words are low enough that I almost miss them.

Something softens inside me. “Thanks.”

She looks surprised by the answer.

I reach for the emergency makeup bag on the counter and pull out a tube of lip gloss I don’t really like. Too sticky. Too pink. I hold it out. “You want this?”

Anna stares at it. “I can have it?”

“Yeah, you poor creature.” I shrug. “It looks bad on me anyway.”

The second the words leave my mouth, I regret the last part. Because Anna’s face changes. Just slightly. Gift becoming discard. She takes it anyway. “Thank you.”

“Hannah, now.” Mom’s already at the door.

I follow the line of contestants into the hallway. Before I step through the curtain, I glance back.

Anna stands in the dressing room doorway clutching the lip gloss to her chest. Our eyes meet. I lift two fingers in a tiny wave.

She doesn’t wave back.

But I know she watches until I disappear into the lights.

I win that night.

That’s how I remember it now, though at sixteen I still believed winning meant something besides proof that all the correcting worked.

The crown goes on my head. The sash crosses my chest. My mother cries. My father whistles too loudly from the back of the room.

Anna stands beside him holding the carnations again, her face unreadable under the stage lights.

In the truck on the way home, Dad drives with the windows cracked while Mom talks through everything I should have done better. I touch the crown in my lap. The rhinestones press small dents into my palm. Beside me, Anna sits silently with the lip gloss tucked in her fist.

At home, I place the new crown on the shelf beside the others.

Anna appears in the doorway. “Can I hold that one?”

I should say yes. I know this even then. Some part of me understands that she isn’t asking for rhinestones. She’s asking to touch the thing that makes me loved.

But I’m tired. My scalp aches. My cheeks hurt from smiling.

“Not tonight.”

Anna’s face closes. A door shutting without sound. “Okay.” She walks away.

I sit on my bed and wait for relief to come.

It doesn’t.

Only years later will I understand that Anna wasn’t strange because she was born that way. Strange things grew inside children who watched love being measured out and realized they were losing before they understood the game.

But at sixteen, I don’t know that yet.

At sixteen, I only know that my sister scares me sometimes.

And that the scariest part is how badly she wants to be me.

TWENTY-SEVEN

College gives me the first room my mother never touches.

A narrow dorm room in Knoxville with cinderblock walls, thin carpet and a roommate who sleeps through three alarms every morning. The closet barely holds half my clothes. The desk wobbles if I lean too hard on the left side.

I love every inch of it.

No one tells me to lift my chin. No one tells me I look blotchy. No one checks whether my lipstick makes my teeth white enough.

I study interior design because my mother spent my entire senior year telling people I would. To my surprise, I’m good at it. Not the way I’m good at pageants, which mostly means standing still while other people decide my value.

Design has rules, but the rules bend if you understand why they exist. Color pulls emotion through a room. Light changes the life of a space. A house can welcome a person or make her feel like an intruder without saying a word.

That part interests me more than I admit.

I make friends easily. I’ve spent most of my life being trained for rooms full of strangers. By sophomore year I have a circle. Girls who borrow my curling iron and cry on my bed after breakups. Girls who call me Hannah Renee when they want something and Hannah Fox when they’re annoyed.

Nobody calls me pretty one.

Nobody calls Anna smart one.

At first, I think that means I’m free. The mind is adorable like that. Show it one unlocked door and it starts planning escape routes as if the entire building isn’t still on fire.

I meet Conor Slater junior year at a party I almost skip.

I’m already planning my exit when he walks in. He isn’t the most handsome man in the room. But that’s not why I look.

People notice him and try not to show it. Girls sit straighter. Boys make room without realizing they’re doing it. He doesn’t swagger. He moves through the room like he understands attention.

I know that posture. It takes training.

My interest drops when someone mentions criminal justice. Criminal justice sounds like courtrooms and uniforms and men who mistake moral certainty for personality.

“His family’s loaded, though. Like loaded-loaded. Slater Building Group.”

I look at him again. He’s exactly the type of man my mother would want for me.

A rich boy playing the hero. I should find that ridiculous.

I lean closer anyway.

Twenty minutes later, he’s beside me on the back deck while cool March air raises goose bumps along my arms.

“You looked like you were about to leave,” he says.

“I was.”

“What stopped you?”

“Curiosity.”

“About me?”

“Don’t make it sound so rewarding.”

His laugh is quieter than I expect. Better, too. “I’m Conor.”

“I know.”

“That’s ominous.”

“People talk.”

“Good things, I hope.”

“Mostly financial.”

He winces. Not enough for most people to catch, but I do. Good. He has pride. That makes him more interesting.

“My parents have money. I didn’t earn it, and I’m not pretending I did.”

That surprises me. Against my better judgment, I like it very much.

“So, criminal justice. Rebellion or penance?”

“Neither. I want to do something useful.”

It should sound rehearsed. The sincerity of it catches me off guard.

“You could build hospitals with family money. Libraries. Affordable housing. Your name on plaques, everybody applauds, nobody shoots at you.”

He studies me. “You always this practical?”

“Yes.”

“Liar.”

The word is faint. Almost admiring.

My pulse changes.

He looks at me like he already suspects I’m made of more than the bright surface everyone else keeps touching. That’s dangerous. I’m twenty-one, so of course I mistake dangerous for intimate.

He walks me back to my dorm two hours later. At the entrance, I expect him to make a move. Instead, he shoves his hands in his pockets. “I’d like to see you again.”

“Why?”

“I want to know more about you.”

That line should be terrible. From him it works, because he says it plainly.

I go upstairs smiling.

Bailey sits up in bed and groans. “Oh no.”

“What?”

“You met somebody.”

“I didn’t.”

She points at my face. “You look stupid.”

I throw a pillow at her.

But I do. I absolutely do.

The first year with Conor is the best of my life.

I don’t know that at the time. That’s the cruelty of happiness. It rarely announces itself while it’s happening. It waits until later, when everything has gone wrong, and stands in the wreckage holding proof that joy was real once.

At twenty-one, I think being understood and being loved are basically the same thing.

Maybe twenty-one-year-old girls shouldn’t be trusted with romance before their frontal lobes finish wiring themselves.

TWENTY-EIGHT

My parents die one month before graduation.

It happens on a rainy road outside Jackson with my father behind the wheel and my mother in the passenger seat, a curve he’d taken a hundred times before and a blood alcohol level the coroner delivers gently, as if his softness can blunt numbers.

I’m twenty-two. Anna is nineteen.

Conor is at the police academy and can’t attend the funeral. He sends flowers instead. His parents send flowers too, an enormous white arrangement with a card in Rose Slater’s elegant hand.

We’re holding you close.

Anna comes from Vanderbilt wearing a black dress that fits badly and shoes practical enough to climb trees. She’s heavier than the last time I saw her. The angry red has faded since high school, but the acne is still visible enough to make people stare or glance away.

But there’s something different in how she carries herself now. It’s not confidence because that implies light. This is denser. Much heavier. Something forged somewhere nobody could watch.

She hugs me when she arrives. I expect awkwardness. Instead, her arms close around me firmly, and for one terrible second, I nearly sob against her shoulder.

She releases me first. “Are you okay?”

The question surprises me. She’s never asked it like that before. Directly. Without needing the answer to include her.

“No.”

A brittle smile twitches the corners of her lips. “Good.”

A startled laugh breaks out of me, and her mouth lifts more naturally, and there she is. My little sister. Or someone like her.

The funeral happens in fragments.

Dark wood. White flowers. People I barely know touching my arm and talking about my mother’s elegance and my father’s charm, as if adjectives can wash blood alcohol levels away.

I cry through most of it. Grief has a body and mine refuses to behave.

Anna sits beside me without crying. Dry-eyed. Still. Hands folded in her lap.

I keep glancing at her. Waiting. Wanting her to break open too so we can be inside the same moment for once. She doesn’t. When the congregation starts singing “Amazing Grace,” I reach for her hand.

Anna looks down at my fingers. Then forward again.

The rejection hits harder than it should. Maybe because our parents are dead in front of us. Maybe because I remember a tiny finger curling around mine in a hospital room nineteen years earlier. Maybe because for once, I’m the one left hanging.

After the service, she stands beside me near the graves while people pass with wet eyes and promises of casseroles. Rain darkens the cemetery grass. Mud clings to my heels.

“You going back to Nashville tonight?” I ask.

“Tomorrow.”

“You can stay with me.”

“No.” The answer comes so fast I flinch. Anna notices. “I have a hotel.”

“Oh.”

Silence crowds between us. A lifetime of looks and half-finished sentences lingers.

“Have you decided what you want to focus on? In school?”

“Psychiatry.”

I stare at her. “Really?”

Her eyes narrow. “Why is that surprising?”

“It sounds…” I almost say boring. “Intense.”

She glances at the coffins. “I need to learn how to unfuck myself after growing up in that house.”

A cousin nearby turns sharply and pretends not to hear. I pull my sister several steps away. “Anna.”

“What?”

“We’re at their graves.”

Her face seems to shrug. “I know where we are.”

“This isn’t the place.”

She faces me, shoulders back. “You’ve been deciding the place my entire life.” Her voice doesn’t rise. That’s what makes it land. “The crown that wasn’t for babies. The lip gloss you handed me like a consolation prize after that girl laughed at me and you said nothing. Every room I walked into that you were already standing in.” She isn’t cruel about it, but the knife is sharp. “You’ve been managing me and calling it love. I know you believe it’s the same thing.”

My mouth opens.

She lifts her chin. “I know you believe that.”

Rain dots her hair. She does nothing to brush it away.

For the first time, I understand that Anna is no longer asking to be let in.

That should relieve me. It doesn’t.

“I loved you.” The tense comes out wrong and I know it immediately.

A hundred emotions move behind her eyes. “In your way. That’s part of the problem.”

She leaves a few minutes later. There’s no final accusation, just Anna walking across wet grass toward the parking lot. I stand between two graves holding flowers someone pressed into my hands because I look like the daughter people know how to comfort.

I don’t go after her.

That’s the part I’ll regret later. Not the worst regret. Just one of many.

Conor proposes six months after graduation.

By then, I’m working part-time for a local designer in Knoxville and taking freelance jobs for realtors who want model homes to feel less like staged boxes and more like lives waiting to start. Conor has finished the academy and looks unbearably handsome in uniform, which is annoying because I know exactly how much he enjoys pretending he doesn’t know it.

He proposes at the overlook where we used to park. The ring is beautiful. I say yes before he finishes asking.

Rose cries when we tell her. Stanley shakes Conor’s hand and pulls me into a hug that smells like expensive soap and cedar.

He kisses my cheek. “You’re family now.”

I love him for saying it but family is a word people use far too confidently for something so fragile.

Wedding planning gives me something to control. I build the day like a room, every piece placed to create the feeling I want people to walk away with.

Love. Elegance. Continuity. Proof.

Anna sends back the RSVP card two weeks after it arrives. Declines with regret. No explanation.

I stand in the kitchen holding the card while Conor pours coffee behind me.

“Your sister not coming?”

“She’s busy.”

I run my thumb over her handwriting. Beautiful in its precision.

He comes up behind me and kisses the side of my neck. “I’m sorry.”

I make myself shrug. “It’s fine.”

It isn’t. Which irritates me, because I know why she declined—I didn’t ask her to be a bridesmaid.

At the time that decision made sense. My bridesmaids are girls from college, women who photograph well together. The pictures matter. Maybe that makes me shallow. Or maybe it’s because pictures last. Years later, people believe the version of happiness that photographs best.

I’d offered Anna something different. The front pew. Our mother’s seat. That felt more important to me—more intimate, more honest than standing in a line of pretty girls. I thought she would understand.

Or I told myself she should.

The week after her card arrives, a package comes too. Inside is a silver frame from a store I’m surprised Anna knows. No note except the small enclosure card tucked under the ribbon.

Congratulations, Hannah and Conor. For the beautiful pictures I’m sure you’ll have. Wishing you both happiness.

Anna

The knife slices deep.

The wedding is beautiful. Everyone says so.

The photographs are better than I imagined. Pale flowers, perfect light, Conor in a dark suit looking at me like I’m the only solid thing in a shifting world. The bridesmaids look perfect.

The front pew is empty.

At the reception, I smile until my cheeks hurt. Conor dances with me beneath strings of lights and tells me he’s never seen anything more beautiful. For a while I believe him.

For a while, that’s enough.

Later, in the hotel suite, after my dress hangs from the wardrobe door and the pins come out of my hair, I sit cross-legged on the bed and open Anna’s card again. Conor steps out of the bathroom in pajama pants, toothbrush still in his mouth.

“You okay?”

I slide the card back into its envelope. “Fine.”

He studies me for a second. Then he lets it go.

That’s one of the first things I love about him. It will become one of the things I hate.

I put the card in the bedside drawer. In the morning, I forget it there.

That seems important now. At the time, I tell myself it isn’t.

TWENTY-NINE

Sweetwater is the kind of place that still remembers what main streets should be. Brick storefronts and painted signs. At the edge of downtown, the town exhales into a creek and trees before the hills gather it back in.

Safe. That’s the word I remember thinking the first time Conor drove me through it.

We marry the day after I turn twenty-four. After the honeymoon in Greece, Conor takes a patrol job in Sweetwater while testing for detective, and I pretend not to notice the subtle disappointment from people who expected the Slater son to walk into the family business wearing cuff links instead of a gun belt.

We buy a house fifteen minutes from his parents. Much bigger than his salary can afford and much smaller than his trust fund would have allowed. A beautiful gray stone colonial with white trim and empty rooms upstairs waiting for children who don’t yet exist.

I love it immediately.

The kitchen windows face east, pouring morning light across the counters. I spend entire afternoons choosing rugs and paint samples and drawer hardware while Conor laughs and pretends not to understand why brass finishes matter.

The first year in Sweetwater still glows bright in my memory despite everything that comes later. I need it to matter. People always want a pretty story once they know the ending—warning signs lined up neatly from the beginning like little roadside markers pointing toward disaster.

Life almost never works that way. Sometimes the house doesn’t grow fangs until you’re already living inside it.

I lose the first baby at eleven weeks. The second at nine. The third pregnancy terrifies me so badly I refuse to even think about my growing belly at all. I keep waiting for blood. Every bathroom trip becomes a private negotiation with God.

Conor turns gentler during those months than I’ve ever seen him before or since. He rubs my back during morning sickness and talks to my stomach when he thinks I’m asleep. He argues with me when I try lifting grocery bags.

“I’m pregnant, not terminal.”

“You’re carrying my kid.”

Unless my body fails again.

At the time, I mistake possessiveness for devotion because the line between them can be very thin when someone loves you hard enough.

To our delight, Romy arrives screaming and furious after nineteen hours of labor. Conor cries first. That’s the detail I remember most clearly—him standing beside the hospital bed with tears sliding down his face while the nurse places our daughter in his arms.

“She’s perfect.” His voice breaks on the word.

For three months, we’re one of those unbearably happy couples everyone secretly hates. The baby sleeps on his chest while he watches football. I walk through the house at two in the morning bouncing a screaming infant while whispering lullabies that sound more like hostage negotiations. Conor kisses my forehead every time he passes me.

I love him so much during those months that it physically hurts sometimes.

That’s important too.

Because the fractures come quietly.

They aren’t accompanied by screaming or violence or shattered glass. They begin with a question at the wrong time in the wrong voice.

Romy is four months old when I walk into the kitchen one afternoon to find Conor sitting at the island staring at her baby pictures spread across the granite. He doesn’t look up.

“She doesn’t look anything like me.”

The words sit between us, innocent at first. I laugh softly. Surely this is insecurity, new-dad nonsense, exhaustion talking through a man who hasn’t slept properly in months.

“She’s four months old.”

“She looks like you.”

“That’s generally how genetics work.”

His gaze lifts slowly. “Were you sleeping with somebody else?”

I grip the counter. “What?”

“I’m asking you a question.”

I stare at him because there’s no right response to absurdity. Anger comes first, but confusion keeps cutting in front of it.

“You think Romy isn’t yours?”

“I think she doesn’t look like me.”

“She’s a baby.”

“That’s not an answer.”

The accusation hurts. What hurts worse is how calm he sounds. Like this conversation already existed in his head before I walked into the room.

“Who exactly do you think I cheated with?”

“You were distant during the pregnancy.”

Distant. I spent nine months terrified our daughter would die inside me. “I was scared.”

“You stopped touching me.”

“I was throwing up six times a day.” The unfairness of it cracks me open. “Are you serious?”

He stands so fast the chair hits the floor. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Act like I’m insane for asking.”

Romy startles awake in her swing beside the window, her tiny face crumpling before the crying starts.

Neither of us moves.

That’s the moment I remember later. Two parents standing three feet from their crying child while suspicion fills the room so completely neither of them can breathe.

When the paralysis breaks, I get there first. I scoop Romy against my chest while Conor turns away and drags both hands through his hair.

“She doesn’t look like me,” he says again. Softer. Almost lost.

Unease grows inside me. My mother used to stare into mirrors searching for flaws no one else could see. Once she noticed them, she couldn’t stop. Conor’s doing that now. Building a reality around his own insecurity.

“You want a DNA test?”

The words taste poisonous.

Conor closes his eyes. “No.”

“You brought it up.”

Silence.

“You want one?”

His jaw tightens. “That’s not what I said.”

“It’s exactly what you meant.”

He looks at me. Really looks.

I don’t look away, even though my eyes are swollen from exhaustion. Even though there are milk stains across my shirt.

Shame flickers across his face before suspicion crushes it. “Let me see your phone.”

The air leaves my lungs. “What?”

“Your phone.”

I laugh. It’s hysterical and ugly. “You think I cheated on you after two miscarriages and hid it well enough to pass off another man’s baby as yours?”

“You’re getting defensive.”

“Because you’re accusing me of something disgusting.”

“Just let me see it.”

“No.”

The answer shocks us both. I’ve spent most of my marriage smoothing conflict before it hardens. Redirecting. Softening. Making things easier to survive. But him demanding my phone while our daughter cries on my shoulder lights pure fury through me.

“No,” I say again, stronger this time.

His expression moves from rage to injury so smoothly I almost miss the transition. “You’d rather fight than reassure me?”

The manipulation is so pure I almost miss it.

“I’m her father.”

“Yes.” I let the answer hang there. “You are.”

I stare at the man I married and understand, for the first time, that certainty can curdle into hunger if someone feeds it the wrong things long enough.

The DNA test happens three weeks later. Conor apologizes before the results come back. Then again after. Then again while crying into my shoulder at two in the morning with Romy asleep in the bassinet beside our bed.

“I don’t know what happened to me.”

I stroke his hair while uncertainty wedges itself into the marriage beside us.

The test confirms what I already knew. Romy is his daughter. Conor frames the lab paperwork as a joke. That frightens me more than the accusation did. He genuinely believes the joke repairs the wound.

I laugh when he wants me to laugh. I kiss him when he wants reassurance. I tell myself exhausted new parents survive worse things every day.

Outside the nursery window, Sweetwater slides softly into evening.

Inside the house, something opens its mouth for the first time.

And it’s hungry.

I lose another baby at twenty-one weeks in the downstairs bathroom while three-year-old Romy watches cartoons in the living room and Conor works a double shift.

The cramps start after lunch. By three o’clock, I’m sitting on cold tile with blood soaking through a towel pressed between my legs while her favorite purple dinosaur chatters happily from the television down the hall.

I call Conor twice. No answer.

Romy pads into the bathroom wearing sparkly socks and one of my old pageant crowns on her head.

“Mommy?”

Her face changes the instant she sees me on the floor. Fear, immediate and pure.

I smile before she can cry. It hurts so badly I nearly black out from it. “I’m okay, baby.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I know.”

Her eyes fill. The crown slips sideways.

Something inside me cracks, not from the pain but from understanding that I’ve become the thing that frightens my child.

I hold out my hand. “Come here.”

She climbs into my lap despite the blood and wraps both arms around my neck while I shake against her small warm body.

I can’t reach Conor. So I call my best friend.

Esme arrives in eleven minutes. I know because I count them from the bathroom floor. She takes one look at me, one look at Romy still in the crown and makes two decisions simultaneously. She scoops Romy up with a story about a spontaneous ice cream adventure at the neighbor’s and gets her out the front door before my daughter can ask any more questions. Then she comes back, sits beside me on the tile without a word and stays there until I can stand.

She drives me to the hospital. She texts Conor three times before he responds.

That’s Esme.

Conor cries harder than I do when he finally arrives, sobbing into the hospital pillow while he holds my hand. And that’s part of what makes all this so difficult to explain. Because men who hold you while they sob aren’t supposed to be the ones you eventually need to escape.

Deterioration settles like dust on furniture. Dinner is silent. Tiny humiliations are delivered in smiling voices.

Conor starts with my clothes. His suggestions are almost thoughtful.

“You really wearing that to the school fundraiser?”

I glance down at the fitted cream sweater dress I bought three weeks earlier. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing.” He eyes the neckline. “Depends how much attention you want from the dads, I guess.”

It isn’t an accusation. Or a joke. It’s much slipperier.

“Relax.” He kisses my temple as he passes. “I’m kidding.”

I change anyway.

That becomes another thing that happens gradually. Lower necklines disappear first. Then shorter dresses. Conor never orders me to do any of it. He simply creates an atmosphere where some choices feel easier to survive than others.

Waylen arrives two years later in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Conor nearly misses the birth because a jackknifed semi shuts down part of the interstate. He runs into the hospital room soaked through and wild-eyed ten minutes before delivery.

“You made it.”

“I told you I would.”

Waylen comes out silent. Romy screamed. Waylen blinks. The nurse lays him on my chest while lightning flashes against the hospital windows, and he opens dark blue eyes that are far too serious for a newborn.

“Oh no,” I whisper.

Conor laughs shakily. “What?”

“I think he’s emotionally observant.”

He presses his forehead against mine while the baby curls damp fists beneath my chin.

For a while after Waylen is born, our marriage is blissful again. Conor drinks less, comes home earlier, sleeps with Waylen on his chest while football commentators drone from the television. Sometimes I catch him staring at us with an expression so nakedly hopeful it nearly destroys me. Like he wants this family badly enough to become good for it.

I want to believe love works that way. I think most people do.

The improvement lasts long enough to fool me.

When Romy turns six, she finds my old pageant photographs in the attic and decides crowns are the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.

She asks if she can compete.

Conor shuts the idea down instantly.

Later, when I remind him he married a pageant girl, he takes a long drink from his beer and says, “I did. And I’ve spent years watching what it left behind.”

The worst part is that he isn’t entirely wrong.

During this time, Esme becomes my oxygen in ways I don’t fully understand until much later.

We meet for coffee once a week at Sweet & Salty while the kids destroy blueberry bagels at the table and old church women gossip over Bible studies in the corner booths. Afterward, we either take a barre class or wander around Valley Building Supply for an hour, sometimes two, while Esme agonizes over tile samples and paint swatches for the house she and her new husband are building. I have opinions about all of it. She pretends to want them and then does whatever she was going to do anyway. It’s the best part of my week.

One October afternoon, she catches me staring out the window while Romy colors beside us and Waylen reorganizes the sugar packets into categories only he understands.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

“Bullshit.”

She tears apart a strawberry rhubarb muffin. “What happened now?”

The now slips under my ribs. Accumulation. She already knows there’s a list.

I stir the americano I no longer want. “Nothing dramatic.”

“That’s usually what screws women up worst.”

I laugh quietly. Then stop, because tears burn behind my eyes for reasons I can’t fully name.

Esme leans forward. “What did he do?”

The question hurts. “He didn’t do anything.”

“Okay.”

“He’s stressed. He works constantly.”

“Okay.”

“He drinks more than he used to, but he’s not…” I press my lips together.

“Not what?”

“He’s a good father.”

“Hannah.” Her voice is careful. “I didn’t ask about his parenting.”

I look out the window. People drift between boutiques. Church bells ring the hour. Everything looks so beautiful here. That’s part of the trap too.

“I don’t know why I’m scared all the time,” I whisper, careful of little ears.

Esme hesitates long enough that I look back at her.

Her expression is the one she gets when she already knows the answer and is deciding whether I’m ready to hear it. “Yes, you do.”

“Esme, I’m not⁠—”

“You know.” She isn’t gentle about it. She never is, and I love her for it even when it costs. “You’ve known for a while. You’re just waiting until you can’t ignore it anymore.”

Romy laughs across the table. Waylen claps at whatever she’s done.

I watch my children and feel the enormity of what leaving would mean. What staying already costs.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I say finally.

Esme reaches across the table and covers my hand with hers. She doesn’t tell me it’ll be okay. She doesn’t tell me what to do. She just holds on, and somehow that’s the most frightening thing anyone has done for me in years.

Because it means she sees it too.

And now I can’t pretend she doesn’t.

THIRTY

The first money I earn in years carries the faint scent of sawdust and printer ink.

I stand in the kitchen turning the check over in my hands while Waylen plays with his trains in the playroom and Romy showers after gymnastics. The house is quiet enough that I jump when the refrigerator turns on.

Eleven hundred dollars. Not Slater money. Not trust fund money. Mine.

A local builder hired me to stage two model homes after his wife saw photos from a fundraiser I decorated for the elementary school. I spent three Saturdays rearranging furniture and arguing passionately about throw pillows while a man named Rick begrudgingly carried lamps from room to room at my direction.

I loved every second of it. Somewhere along the way, I’d stopped expecting joy from things that belonged only to me.

Conor walks in twenty minutes later and drops his keys into the bowl beside the refrigerator. “How was gymnastics?”

“Romy informed another child that glitter is a design choice, not a personality trait.”

His mouth twitches. “That’s my girl.”

I smile and make my first mistake of the evening. “I got paid today.”

The grin disappears. “For what?”

He doesn’t remember.

“The model homes I helped stage,” I prompt, regretting saying a word.

“You actually charged them?”

“That’s generally how jobs work.”

Conor opens the refrigerator and grabs a beer. “I figured it was more of a favor.”

“It started that way.” Irritated, I hold up the check. “He thought I deserved more.”

He pops the cap. Foam hisses into the kitchen’s silence. “You don’t need to work, Hannah.”

Ah yes. The language of reasonable cages.

“I know I don’t need to.”

“Then why do it?”

Because I miss having thoughts that belong to me. Because I’m disappearing in this house one invisible sacrifice at a time.

I lift my chin. “I liked it.”

“You can decorate our house for free.”

The joke stings. Mostly because he thinks it’s one.

I fold the check once, then again. “That’s not the same thing.”

Conor studies me over the neck of the bottle. “You really unhappy staying home with the kids?”

The question carries danger. This is the emotional quicksand where one wrong step and everything becomes accusation instead of conversation.

“I didn’t say that.”

He makes a show of looking around our enormous kitchen, going so far as opening and closing a cabinet door. “You have a pretty damn good life.”

The invisible accounting ledger always hovers beneath us now. Good house. Good husband. Good children. Good life.

So what exactly is wrong with you?

I hate that the thought forms in my own voice before it ever reaches his.

“I know I do.”

Conor softens, like maybe he hears that I’m close to breaking. “I just don’t want you stressed.”

The words sound right. That’s the thing about Conor. The words almost always sound right.

The money conversations start after that. Often enough that I begin memorizing prices before I bring shopping bags into the house.

“Four hundred dollars for boots?”

I wave toward the garage. “You spent seven hundred on fishing gear last week.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“It’s work equipment.”

I stare at him across the island. “You’re a detective, not a deep-sea fisherman. Or are you going to tell me you reel the suspects in now?”

Sparks practically shoot from his eyes. “That’s not the point.”

“The point shifts from day to day.” I shoot a few sparks back of my own. “That’s the point.”

Conor laughs. “You really want to spend your weekends arranging furniture in my mom’s friends’ kitchens in fancy boots?”

“At least somebody would appreciate the effort.”

The second the words leave my mouth, I regret them.

Conor’s expression slams shut. “I appreciate you.”

“You critique me.”

He exhales. “I’m being helpful.”

“You monitor me.”

“Hannah, calm⁠—”

“You comment on what I wear. What I feed the kids. What I spend. How organized the house is. How much wine I drink. How often I work out. How often I leave the house.”

His eyes narrow. “I ask questions because⁠—”

“You audit me.”

Silence crashes between us. Upstairs, footsteps cross the hallway. Romy brushing her teeth. Waylen running around half naked.

Conor drags a hand across his mouth. “You know what your problem is?”

I laugh, the sound a little hysterical. “Please enlighten me.”

“You spend too much time around women who hate their husbands. Esme’s divorced.”

“She left a man who cheated on her.”

“And now she thinks every marriage is abuse.”

He’s not wrong. That’s what bothers me. He’s clocked exactly where I breathe easier, whose shoulders I lean on. And he’s decided what to do about it.

“I don’t want you hanging out with her anymore.”

I hate him.

What I don’t realize is that someone in the house is starting to hate me too.

The fracture with Romy happens slowly enough that I don’t recognize it until Conor names it out loud.

Waylen is easier. That’s the ugly truth. Not that I love him more. But it’s nice to be around a person who doesn’t enter a room expecting war. Romy came into the world furious and brilliant and sharp-edged in ways that remind me she is painfully like both her parents. Waylen still crawls into my lap during thunderstorms and asks whether clouds get lonely.

One child exhausts me. One heals me. The mathematics of it is brutal and impossible to navigate.

One Tuesday night, Conor comes home late while I’m trying to help Romy finish spelling words with Waylen crying because his grilled cheese touched green beans.

“I hate this stupid list,” Romy snaps, shoving the worksheet away.

“You still have five words left.”

She slams her fists on the table. Anger and exhaustion hit the same note at the same moment, and I’m on my feet before I can stop myself.

“Whoa.” Conor walks in right before I say something I’ll regret.

I grab a towel for the water she’s knocked over. “Can you take him for a minute?”

Conor scoops up Waylen. “There’s my buddy.” Waylen clings to his neck. Jealousy flashes across Romy’s face so fast most people would miss it.

I don’t miss much anymore.

“You’re harder on her.” The words are casual, tossed over Conor’s shoulder while he pats Waylen’s back.

“Excuse me?”

He takes a beer from the fridge. “You’re harder on Romy than you are on him.”

Romy flashes a triumphant grin.

I want to howl at the moon. “That’s not true.”

He strokes Romy’s hair. “She notices it.”

Romy’s face goes splotchy with the effort of not crying, and for one terrible second, I’m not looking at my daughter. I’m looking at my sister. Anna’s face. Anna’s eyes. The expression she wore whenever I handed her something I didn’t want anymore and called it generosity.

The recognition hits so hard I nearly step backward.

Conor grabs my arm. “Where’d you go?”

I lift my chin. “I love both my children with everything in my heart.”

Romy stares at her wet worksheet. Waylen reaches a hand toward me from his father’s arms. Conor watches me like a suspect.

“She’s a kid, Hannah. Kids always know who gets the softer version of you.”

I hate that he’s right.

Waylen squirms. “Daddy, can we watch dinosaurs?”

Conor kisses the top of his head. “Absolutely.” He walks out of the kitchen carrying warmth with him while I stay behind holding discipline and guilt.

Romy keeps staring at the worksheet.

“Romy.”

Nothing.

“Baby.”

She doesn’t look up. “You yell at me more.”

Children tell the truth long before they learn which ones make adults uncomfortable.

After everyone falls asleep that night, I open my laptop at the kitchen table with a glass of wine beside me.

I enter a name I haven’t typed in years. Anna Fox. Vanderbilt psychiatry. Nothing useful. I try “Joanna Fox Tennessee,” then “Joanna Fox psychiatry.”

The search engine returns a woman called Jo Fox Adair.

And that’s how I learn my baby sister got married. I don’t know this woman at all.

She’s well respected, apparently. Academic mentions, conference appearances, an award-winning paper about trauma and identity formation. I search for a photo, for any image that connects to the Anna Fox I know. There’s nothing. No social media. No face I can find.

I stare at the screen while wine warms my bloodstream.

My parents are gone. My marriage is thin enough to tear. My children are asleep upstairs. Anna vanished somewhere into a life I can’t locate while I was busy building one pretty enough to photograph.

Guilt moves through me. The kind built from unanswered cards and missed calls and years spent assuming there would always be more time.

I open an old email thread. My last message sits unanswered beneath Christmas photos from three years earlier. Romy missing her front teeth. Waylen smashing cake into his hair. Conor smiling beside me with his arm around my waist.

I stare at that photo for a long time and start typing.

I miss you.

My fingers hover over the send button.

Upstairs, something thuds in the hallway. I glance toward the ceiling.

By the time I look back down, the cursor blinks inside an empty draft.

I deleted the words without realizing I’d done it.

The house settles around me again.

Hungry. Patient. Listening.

THIRTY-ONE

Conor comes home early looking like he’s marched through hell to get here.

I’m at the kitchen island sketching cabinet layouts for a lake house remodel while pasta sauce simmers on the stove. Waylen’s asleep upstairs worn out after preschool. Romy’s in the craft room working on a solar system project that currently involves enough glitter to violate several environmental laws.

Conor stops in the doorway. His tie is already loosened, jacket gone, and there’s a flatness in his eyes that only shows up after bad days.

“What are you doing?”

I keep my pencil moving. “Working.”

“You took another job?”

“It’s not full time.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

I set the pencil down before I break it.

He stares at the drawings spread across the counter. Kitchen elevations. Fabric swatches. Flooring notes in my own handwriting. Proof that parts of my brain still exist outside his control.

“I met with the Thompsons this afternoon.”

“You didn’t mention it.”

“I didn’t think you’d care.”

“That’s convenient.”

The accusation is disguised enough to almost miss. I study him more carefully. Eyes bloodshot. Jaw tight.

“Are you okay?”

He barks a short, ugly laugh. “You really want to talk about my day?”

“Yes.”

“A little girl got pulled out of a creek three miles outside town.” Conor walks to the refrigerator and grabs the bourbon from the freezer instead of the beer beside it. “She was nine.”

Romy’s age. I set my pencil down very carefully.

“That’s terrible.”

“She still had glitter nail polish on.”

The admission comes out distant. Detached in the way people sound when their minds haven’t caught up to what their eyes already saw.

“I’m so sorry.”

Conor pours bourbon nearly to the top of the glass. “I spent an hour standing beside a dead child while her father screamed.”

I close the sketchbook. “I can’t imagine.”

“No.” He lifts the glass. “You can’t.”

The bourbon disappears in two long swallows. I know this version of him and the frayed edges that cut everyone nearby without meaning to.

“I’m not trying to fight with you tonight.”

He glares at the sketchbook. “Then maybe don’t hide shit from me.”

“It’s a staging project, Conor. Not a cocaine ring.”

“You already have a full-time job.”

I look around the kitchen. The laundry basket. Dinner on the stove. School forms covering one end of the counter. One of Waylen’s tiny sneakers abandoned near the pantry.

“I know.”

“So why isn’t it enough?”

There’s the real question. This was never about money or work.

I push the sketchbook aside. “I’m very sorry about the little girl. Truly. But I’m not doing this again.”

“Doing what?”

“This.” I gesture between us. “The interrogation. The accounting. The implication that wanting something for myself makes me selfish.”

He laughs into the rim of his glass. “You think arranging furniture is some profound feminist awakening?”

“No. I think I have a mind and I’m tired of pretending I don’t.”

“You have children.”

“Romy’s in fourth grade. Waylen goes to preschool three days a week.”

“The house still needs you.”

I stare at him. “The house.”

He has the grace to look ashamed, though it doesn’t last long. “The kids need consistency.”

“I am consistent.”

“You’re distracted.”

I’ve never wanted to hit anyone more in my life. “Distracted? When exactly do I have the time for that?”

“You’ve got cleaners coming every Thursday and still act overwhelmed half the time.”

That one lands. I hate that my first instinct is to justify myself.

He scoffs. “Maybe put one of your little pageant crowns on while you clean. God forbid anybody forget you used to be pretty.”

Heat flashes through me so fast it feels borrowed from every exhausted woman who’s ever stood in a kitchen listening to a man diminish her life.

“You know what?” I grab the laundry basket. “If the cleaners bother you that much, cancel them.”

“How about I cancel everything I do for you?”

I clamp my teeth together. “Fine. Then I’ll pay for everything myself.”

“With your little decorating checks?”

“Yes.” I face him. “At least it’s not Daddy’s money.”

The silence is radioactive.

Upstairs, Romy’s bedroom door opens.

“I don’t want to argue anymore.” I rush to the staircase.

The laundry basket presses against my hip as I climb. Near the top, I kick one of Romy’s stuffed animals aside. Beside it, a pink unicorn with glittery hooves gets the same treatment.

Conor stomps behind me. “Hannah.”

I don’t answer.

“We are absolutely not finished talking.”

When his hand closes around my arm, I’m yanked to a stop.

“Let me go.”

I twist hard against his grip, and the laundry basket slips from my hands. I reach for it, and Conor’s hand shoves between my shoulder blades.

Or braces.

Or reaches.

Even now, I can’t say for certain. I only know the force of him arrives all at once.

My foot comes down on the unicorn’s slick plastic body and rolls sideways. For one suspended, impossible second, the world loses gravity and the staircase vanishes beneath me.

Hardwood and banister trade places in a violent blur.

Impact explodes through my wrist first. Then shoulder. Then hip. Then the side of my head cracking against the floor hard enough to flash white across my vision.

Pain slams through me so violently I can’t breathe.

“Hannah!”

Conor’s voice is followed by Romy’s scream. The sound tears through the house like it’s alive.

“Mommy!”

Waylen starts screaming because Romy’s screaming. My wrist bends wrong against the floorboards.

Conor drops beside me. “Hannah. Look at me.”

I can’t.

Romy flies down the stairs, barefoot and sobbing. Waylen follows in dinosaur pajamas while Conor gathers me against his chest.

“Waylen, buddy, go get frozen peas from the freezer.”

The little boy stares down at us in terror.

“Now.”

Waylen runs.

Romy collapses beside me, sobbing into my shoulder while I try not to vomit from pain.

“It’s okay,” I whisper automatically, even though nothing is okay anymore.

The front door rattles hard enough to make all of us jump, followed by three hard strikes. “Sweetwater PD.”

Everything slows.

Romy cries. Waylen returns with peas. Laundry is everywhere. And I’m half curled against Conor with a wrist already swelling grotesquely.

Conor settles me against the floor and answers the door just as another set of insistent knocks echo through the foyer.

“Holy shit, Slater.”

One officer kneels near me while another takes in the scene.

“What happened?”

“She fell,” Conor answers before I can open my mouth.

The officer takes in the scattered laundry, Romy sobbing, my wrist, the bourbon glass on the table by the stairs.

“It’s my fault.” Romy breaks apart completely. “She tripped because I forgot to pick up my toys.”

The officer looks at the unicorn halfway down the staircase. Then back at me.

And here it is. The moment. The opening.

I can still feel Conor’s hand between my shoulder blades. The push. The not-push. The sudden shift backward.

“He—”

“It’s my fault!” Romy wails, even harder now.

The sound cuts straight through me.

My daughter’s face is destroyed with guilt. Waylen clutches frozen peas against his pajamas, crying silently, terrified and too young to understand why his family’s broken.

The officer pats Romy’s shoulder. “Hey. Accidents happen.”

Conor presses a shaky hand against the back of my neck. “Let’s get you checked out.”

At the hospital, they confirm the wrist is broken in two places and I have a mild concussion. Conor never leaves my side. Not during X-Rays. Not during the cast. Not when the nurse quietly asks whether I feel safe at home.

The question almost makes me laugh.

What does “safe” even mean once someone has become capable of frightening you?

The answer catches behind my teeth and dies there.

By the time the two responding officers stop by the room to check on Detective Conor Slater, the story has already settled into place around all of us.

An accident. Bad night. Nothing more.

Conor sits beside my bed looking hollowed out with guilt while my arm throbs inside fresh plaster.

Did he push me? Or did he not?

I honestly don’t know.

What I do know is that some part of me already believes he’s capable of hurting me.

What I do know is that my wrist still shattered either way.

And someday, if we stay on this path, I might not get back up.

THIRTY-TWO

Four-year-old boys are terrible at baseball.

Correction. They’re fundamentally opposed to the core principles of the sport.

One child in left field is collecting dandelions in his hat. Another spins in slow circles with his glove over his face like a tiny drunken astronaut. Waylen stands near second base digging into the dirt with the bill of his cap while his coach shouts encouragement nobody is listening to.

The scoreboard reads “Tadpoles: 7 Mud Dogs: 7.”

No one involved appears concerned.

Esme lifts her phone and takes a picture. “Your son’s eating dirt again.”

“He ate a mud pie last week.”

Esme laughs. “I see parasite medication in your future.”

I pull a pencil from my purse to scratch the skin beneath my cast. The break has healed enough that I’ve ditched the sling, but my wrist still throbs at night and refuses certain angles. Three weeks. The bruises on my arms and legs faded from plum to yellow green before disappearing under makeup and sleeves. The memory hasn’t faded at all.

On the field, an opposing player, the approximate size of a well-fed cricket, hits the ball on his fourth try. Every child on both teams immediately sprints toward it from whatever unrelated location they were occupying. The ball disappears beneath a pile of helmets and cleats while the coach blows his whistle into the void.

Chaos continues uninterrupted.

Romy sits farther down the bleachers beside her friend, Ava, both girls bent over Ava’s phone, pretending the game doesn’t exist. They’re ten years old—all long legs and watchful eyes and growing independence. Every few minutes she glances toward me.

Checking. Always checking now.

Esme pushes her sunglasses to the top of her head and touches my arm. “Hannah.”

The tone changes everything. I know what’s coming before she says it.

“What have you decided?”

I stare at the field. “I have the paperwork all filled out.”

Esme blows out a relieved sigh. “That’s progress.”

Is it?

“I just need to sign it. Give it to the attorney and she files.” The words are strange in my mouth. True and impossible simultaneously. “Legal separation to start.”

Saying it aloud makes the ground shift beneath the bleachers.

Fear follows right on its heels. The papers waiting in the bottom drawer of my desk aren’t just the end of my marriage. They’re the beginning of two children trying to understand why their family no longer fits together.

“Hey.” Esme bumps my shoulder. “Waylen’s up.”

I pull out my phone and hit record.

On the field, Waylen has been steered toward the home plate by two patient coaches running on coffee and goodwill. The helmet is much too big for his head, tilted sideways, wobbling every time he moves. He swings three times at the ball sitting completely still on the tee.

Stomps his foot each time.

The coaches reposition the tee. Waylen repositions his feet. He sets his jaw with an expression of profound four-year-old seriousness.

He swings.

Contact.

The ball dribbles maybe four feet.

Waylen stares at it.

Every parent on both sides starts screaming. “Run! Run, Waylen, run!”

His face lights up in startled delight, and he takes off—helmet bouncing wildly, arms pumping—directly across the field toward third base.

The entire field erupts. His teammates are screaming. The coaches are pointing desperately at first base. The third baseman, a tiny girl in pigtails, looks personally offended by his arrival.

Esme is laughing so hard she’s making no sound at all.

I’m laughing too. Actually laughing, the full-body kind that makes the phone shake in my hand.

Waylen slides into the wrong base like a professional athlete, completely committed.

I cheer wildly as Waylen is redirected to first. He has plenty of time because the defense has thrown the ball in three different directions, and there’s currently a dogpile on top of it right off short stop.

“I hit it, Mommy, I hit it!”

I zoom in on his face, and love blooms through every cell. “Good job, Way!”

But my laughter has faded before the next child steps up to bat. Esme notices and squeezes my good hand.

“How’s Conor been?”

I exhale all the air in my lungs, buying time. “Busy at work. Perfect at home.”

She growls low in her throat. “Of course he is.”

Flowers delivered to the house. Coffee in bed every morning. His hands trembling while he buttoned my shirt because my wrist hurt too badly to manage it myself.

The trembling is what I don’t fully understand. Because it’s real. Conor’s guilt is real, and his love for us is real, and he’s capable of real tenderness. All of that is true at the same time as everything else.

“He’s trying,” I say finally.

“I know he is.” Esme exhales a long breath. “I also know that doesn’t change what you need to do.”

She’s right.

“Because you understand now that trying isn’t enough.” She holds my gaze. “And you can’t unknow that.”

Below us, the game winds down. Both teams line up to shake hands. The team mom produces juice boxes and orange slices while parents collect helmets and gloves and the various personal items abandoned across the outfield. Waylen accepts his juice box with solemn ceremony. He’s earned it.

Waylen’s head swings toward the parking lot and he detonates. “Daddy!”

My entire body locks.

Esme groans. “I thought he wasn’t coming.”

He wasn’t. He called earlier to let me know he had to work late.

But here Conor is, striding toward the field in plainclothes, tie loosened, sleeves rolled to his elbows. Waylen hits him at a full sprint, and Conor catches him one-armed without breaking stride, laughing as the boy climbs him like a tree.

Romy abandons Ava and races over.

The expression on her face when Conor pulls her in—relief, pure and unguarded, the face she only makes when she’s forgotten to be watchful—nearly guts me.

Beside me, Esme finds my hand and holds it.

“He can still be their father,” she says quietly, like she already knows where my mind went. “Even if you don’t live together. That doesn’t change.”

“I know.”

I do know. It doesn’t help.

Conor looks toward the bleachers. His gaze lands on Esme first, the smile fading, before shifting to me. He walks over with Waylen still on his hip, Romy’s hand in his free one, both kids talking over each other while he nods and grins and looks, from any distance, like the devoted husband and father he wants the world to see.

He kisses my cheek. Whiskey curls warm beneath mint gum and aftershave.

Not drunk. But not sober either.

His mouth brushes my ear. “What’s she doing here?”

I smile brightly. “She came to watch the game.”

His gaze slides to Esme. “She doesn’t even have kids.”

Esme bares her teeth. “Good to see you too, Conor.”

Waylen chatters about the wrong base like it was a tactical decision. Conor keeps one hand on his back while Romy leans into his arm.

Everything terrible about this would be easier if love and fear didn’t wear the same face.

Conor looks back at me and smiles. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

The lie settles between us while our children orbit their father under the warm Tennessee sun, and Esme holds my hand, and the paperwork sits unsigned in the bottom drawer of my desk.

And I already know that tonight, when Conor reaches for me in the dark the way he does after his guilt gets loud enough, I won’t know how to say no.

I’ll let it happen. I’ll make the little sounds and arch my back and pretend that my body still belongs to me.

And tomorrow, I’ll carry the sex inside me like a haunting as I sign the papers to tear my family apart.

THIRTY-THREE

“I’m scared of you.”

The words leave my mouth softly enough that Dr. Keller leans forward in her chair. Conor goes completely still beside me on the couch.

The chain on the ceiling fan makes tiny tapping sounds while a diffuser pumps lavender into the air so aggressively it should qualify as chemical warfare. My cast rests in my lap. I twist my wedding ring against my finger with my good hand.

Dr. Keller doesn’t rush to fill the uncomfortable silence.

Conor stares at the floor for a long time. When he laughs once, I know he isn’t amused. Wounded is much closer.

“I never wanted you to be scared of me.”

Twelve days ago, I filed for legal separation. Three days later, Conor moved into one of his parents’ short-term rentals fifteen minutes away, and Romy cried hard enough she threw up. Waylen asked whether Dad still loved us. Conor asked for therapy that same night. For the kids, he said. Maybe for us too. I decided twelve years of marriage deserved at least one honest autopsy before burial.

And even now, after everything, there are moments where he sounds so heartbreakingly sincere that my certainty collapses around the edges.

I know what many women would say. Women who’d trade places with me without hesitation—the house, the income, the respected husband, the life that photographs so well. They’d say, “at least he doesn’t hit you” and mean it as comfort.

They wouldn’t be wrong, exactly. They’d just be measuring from the floor. Someone built it very low a long time ago, and we’ve all been congratulating men for clearing it ever since.

Dr. Keller folds her hands on her notebook. “Conor, can you tell Hannah what happened from your perspective the night she went down the stairs?”

He exhales slowly. “She walked away.”

“That’s your explanation?”

“No.” He rubs both hands over his face. “That’s just where it started.” He keeps staring at the carpet. “When she walked away, I panicked.”

That isn’t the word I expected.

“What panicked you?” Dr. Keller asks.

“I already knew she was thinking about leaving.”

That much is true.

“You want to know the sick part?” His laugh goes brittle. “I understood why.”

Dr. Keller stays perfectly still. That’s her gift. She lets silence become a container, holding it open until someone fills it.

Conor’s shoulders rise and fall. “My dad used to say that men lose their families one piece at a time. Respect goes first. Then peace. Then the wife. Then the kids.” He pulls at a cuticle. “I’d been watching myself do exactly that for a long time.”

“When did you first feel like you needed to control what was around you?” Dr. Keller asks.

Silence stretches, and I’m not sure he’ll answer.

“Thirteen.” He says it to the floor. “There was a coach.”

The way he says it turns the room temperature down.

We’ve talked about his childhood, but only from the surface—schools, sports, scholarships, his father’s business. Nothing underneath any of it.

“He ran private practices.” Conor’s face grows an alarming shade of red. “Extra drills. Extra discipline. Said it separated serious players from the ones just taking up space.”

Dr. Keller says nothing. Neither do I.

“He’d hold the back of my neck when he…” Conor swallows hard. “Just hard enough so we understood who was in control.” A dot of blood appears from where he pulled the cuticle off. “He told us that boys who talked became boys nobody believed. Said it like he was doing us a favor. Teaching us something useful.”

I want to reach for him so badly that I curl into myself instead. He needs to get this out of himself, and if I move a single inch, he might not be able to.

“I believed him.” He sets to work on another cuticle. “For a long time.”

I stare at my husband. At the line of his jaw and the blood welling from his thumb and the terrible knowing that he endured something no child ever should.

“He used to say ‘fear creates discipline.’” Conor’s mouth curves without warmth. “Guess that one really stuck.”

“What do you think it taught you?” Dr. Keller asks.

He considers it seriously, which is somehow more painful than if he’d deflected. “That if you’re not the one holding the back of someone’s neck, you’re the one being held.” He finally looks up at me. “I never wanted to be in that position again. So I made sure I wasn’t.”

Red-rimmed eyes. Exhausted. Raw in a way I’ve never witnessed from him in all these years.

“I went into law enforcement because I liked walking into chaos and taking control of it.” He sucks on the wound. “I didn’t realize I’d brought it home with me until it was already everywhere.”

Dr. Keller lets that breathe. “Hannah, what are you feeling right now?”

Everything. Nothing. I don’t know how to hold both at once. The man who may have pushed me at the top of the stairs and the boy who learned that fear was the only reliable currency.

“I don’t know how to stop being angry at someone I also feel sorry for,” I say finally.

Conor flinches.

“That’s not an insult.” I fist my hands to stop from reaching for him. “It’s just true.”

Dr. Keller’s pen whispers across her notebook. “That’s actually a very important thing to know about yourself, Hannah.”

On the ceiling, the fan chain keeps tapping its small, patient rhythm.

I think about how hard my hands shook when I signed the paperwork. About Esme’s hand over mine on the bleachers. About Romy and Waylen’s faces when Conor walked across that parking lot.

About the pregnancy test I bought three days ago and haven’t opened.

Understanding why someone became who they are doesn’t change what they did with it.

I know that. I do.

But I also know that I walked into this office certain and I’m walking out less certain. I’m not sure whether that’s wisdom or weakness.

Dr. Keller closes her notebook. “Same time Thursday?”

My mother-in-law pulls me into a hug before I’m fully up the porch steps.

Inside, I can hear Waylen pushing his toy cars across the floors. Stanley rises from his chair and kisses my cheek.

“How’d it go?”

Conor had looked hollowed out when we parted in the parking lot. Like a piece of himself had been removed, and he wasn’t sure yet whether the removal would heal or just leave a void.

“It was a lot.”

Rose squeezes my arm. “Marriage is hard, sweetheart. The fact that you’re both trying says everything.”

My smile’s held together with all the effort left inside me.

“He’s attended two AA meetings.” I reach for a bit of good news. “Eight days sober.”

Rose waves a delicately ringed hand, her nose wrinkling. “Conor shouldn’t air that in public.”

There it is. The same mechanism, older and more refined.

Stanley clears his throat. “What Rose means is that Conor values his privacy. His reputation in this town matters to his work.”

I study the man who told me I was family the day Conor proposed.

Romy appears at the top of the stairs and stomps down. “Can we go?”

Waylen comes skidding around the corner in socked feet and crashes into my legs. “Mommy! Papa let me steer the riding mower!”

Stanley’s expression warms. “Supervised. Very supervised.”

Rose laughs and it’s genuine, and for one unguarded moment we’re just people in a foyer who love the same small boy. It’s enough to almost make me burst into tears.

It’s not enough to change anything.

Stanley walks me to the door. His hand finds my shoulder. “However things shake out,” he says quietly, “I hope we can all stay reasonable people.”

The word “reasonable” does a lot of work in that sentence. I hear every bit of it.

“Of course.”

His eyes harden. “Good. I don’t like it when things get messy.”

THIRTY-FOUR

The flowers on the porch are white roses this time.

A handwritten note rests between the stems.

I’m trying.

Two words. No manipulation underneath them. No implicit demand for credit or reassurance.

That almost makes it worse.

I unlock the front door and carry a sleeping Waylen inside. He curls into a ball the second I lay him on the couch.

Romy stomps up the stairs. “I hate this house!” Her bedroom door slams hard enough to rattle the hallway photos.

Back on the porch, I pick the beautiful arrangement up. The roses brush against the wrist that graduated from fiberglass this morning.

A week ago, I would have put them directly in the trash. Today, I carry them into the kitchen.

In the den, Waylen starts to cry, which is something he’s been doing more often. “Hey, Way. I’m here.”

“I had a bad dream.” He rubs his eyes.

It’s the third one this week.

“Hm…” I tap my lower lip and act like I’m thinking hard. “Let’s come up with a new ending. Maybe the monster turns silly and starts dancing, or a superhero comes to help you.”

He doesn’t fall for the distraction. “I dreamed Daddy left.”

I pull him close. “Oh, Way. Daddy will always be your daddy no matter where he lives.”

He looks up at me, his big hazel eyes brimming with tears. “You and Daddy still mad?”

The question cuts through every piece of me, and I hold him tighter, ignoring the twinge in my wrist. “Not at you.” I kiss his forehead. “No matter what happens between Daddy and me, we both love you more than anything in the world. You understand that?”

He presses his face into my shoulder. It isn’t an answer. He knows that too.

Upstairs, something hits the floor. Then Romy’s door opens, and her footsteps cross the hall in a stomp that’s even stompier than usual.

“Sydney’s parents got divorced.” She appears at the top of the stairs, face blotchy, arms crossed. “Did you know that? She cries every single day at school.”

“Romy, I⁠—”

“She has two backpacks now. One for each house.” Her voice cracks on the last word. “She forgot her homework at her dad’s and her mom screamed at her and she cried in the bathroom for an hour.”

“Come down here, please.”

“I don’t want two Christmases.” Romy’s composure breaks apart completely. “I don’t want two birthdays and two houses and a backpack at Daddy’s and I don’t want⁠—”

“Come here.” I start up the stairs toward her.

She comes down three steps before she stops and her expression shifts. It’s grief folding back into anger. She’s ten; anger is easier to hold.

“I hate you.” The words come out vicious. “I hate this family. I hate everything about what you did.”

She turns and goes back to her room.

The door closes. I wait for the slam. It never comes. Somehow that’s worse.

I stand on the stairs for a moment.

Waylen appears below me, still holding his stuffed dinosaur. “Is Romy okay?”

“She’s upset.” I come back down. “Same as all of us. She’ll be okay.”

He considers this solemnly. “Can we make pizza?”

The question is an enormous relief. Something I can do. Something I can fix.

“Yeah, buddy. Let’s make pizza.”

He’s stirring the dough with a wooden spoon, tongue between his teeth in concentration, when the phone rings.

An unknown number. Probably a telemarketer. Spam. Political nonsense. I’ve had enough of everything today, and I have approximately nothing left.

But instead of tapping the end button, I accidentally tap to accept.

Shit.

“Is this Hannah?”

A man’s voice. Anxious and uncertain.

“Yes.”

“My name’s Luke Adair.” A pause. “I’m your sister’s husband.”

I lean on the counter.

“Is she okay?”

“She…” His voice breaks. “She keeps saying your name.”

Relief and dread arrive at the exact same moment, indistinguishable from each other. “What happened?”

The silence before he answers is too long. “We lost the baby.”

The three miscarriages hit my body simultaneously. Blood. Cold waiting rooms. Ultrasound screens gone silent while technicians got very careful with their faces. I press my free hand flat against the counter.

“I’m so sorry.” The words feel small. “Can I talk to her?”

Luke hesitates. “She may not be making a lot of sense right now.”

“I don’t care.”

Fabric rustles. A muffled voice. Movement. Then breathing.

My sister’s breathing.

After all these years, I recognize it instantly.

“Hannah?”

Her voice is shredded. Small and hoarse and nothing like the strange girl from my childhood memories.

Tears leak down my cheeks before I realize they’re coming. “Hey. Hey, I’m here.”

Silence. Then she starts crying harder. The ugly, animal kind.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Upstairs, Romy’s door opens again. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

Waylen loses control of the wooden spoon and flings the entire bowl of dough onto the floor and looks up at me in abject horror.

“Waylen, for shit’s sake!” My words come out harsh and too loud, and he flinches against the counter.

It’s just a flinch, small and automatic. But it reads like he’s learned to expect it.

“Hannah!”

It’s all too much.

Romy needs me. Waylen needs me. My sister breathes on the other end of the line, needing me too.

Doesn’t she know I’ve lost babies? More than one?

And Anna wasn’t here for any of it.

Something gives way inside me. It happens all at once, the way a dam finally breaks after holding back too much for too long.

“Do you have any idea…” The words come out before I can stop them, before I can swallow fourteen years of hurt. “Do you even know you have a niece and a nephew? Did you know Romy’s funnier than both of us put together? That Waylen has the gentlest heart of anyone I’ve ever met. I had three miscarriages, Anna. Three.”

Romy appears in the kitchen doorway, eyes wide.

I turn away from her.

“I needed you.” My voice drops but doesn’t stop. “You just…you decided we were done and you disappeared and I needed my sister and you weren’t there and now you call me because you need me and I’m supposed to just⁠—”

Waylen starts crying because I’m crying.

Romy goes to him.

“You want to know what it’s like to lose a baby alone?” The words tear out of me, raw with the need to aim them somewhere. “Try doing it while your husband stands over the ultrasound questioning whether it’s even his. Try learning your baby sister’s married on the internet.” I take a quick breath. “The same baby sister who made me grieve her like she died.”

I stop.

The silence on the line is catastrophic.

Anna isn’t crying anymore.

Something in that stillness reaches through the phone and crawls up the back of my neck.

Waylen sobs openly as the dough dries on the floor. Romy stands beside him, staring at me with an expression I’ll never forget.

“Anna.” My voice comes out fractured. “I didn’t…I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said⁠—”

The line goes dead.

I lower the phone.

The kitchen is a disaster. Dinner is ruined. Roses choke me from the counter. My son’s crying. My daughter’s staring. There’s a pregnancy test in my purse.

“I’m sorry,” I tell my children. Neither of them deserved to be inside what I just created. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t…” I wipe my face on my sleeve. “Mommy’s having a hard day and that wasn’t okay.”

Waylen’s thumb travels to his mouth. Romy looks at me for a long moment before grabbing some paper towel. She cleans the dough off the floor without saying a word.

The grace of her actions nearly breaks me.

I call Anna back.

Four times.

No answer.

Later, after the pizza gets made and eaten in near silence and Waylen falls asleep mid-sentence during his third bedtime story and Romy accepts my apology with dignity beyond her years, I pee on the stick and spend the worst three minutes of my life staring at it.

Negative.

I burst into grateful tears that turn into guilt-ridden tears, and soon, I’m sobbing on the bathroom floor. I stay that way until my joints ache from the hard tile.

After washing my face and drying my eyes, I sit at the kitchen table with the phone in my hands.

I try Anna one last time. Voicemail.

I put the phone down and sit with the silence.

I’ve spent months cataloging what Conor does. The way he grabs. The way he controls. The way fear moves through a room when his mood shifts. I’ve built a case against him brick by brick, and I believed every word of it.

And then tonight, I snapped at a four-year-old over spilled dough and watched him flinch away from me. I said things to my grieving sister I cannot take back. Romy cleaned the floor without being asked because she’s learned to manage the adults around her. And I’m sitting here wondering which parts I cataloged about Conor I might also need to catalog about myself.

I’m not the same thing he is. I know that.

But fear leaves fingerprints on everyone it touches.

The next morning, I call my attorney and cancel the separation agreement.

THIRTY-FIVE

For almost two years after I withdraw the separation, I believe we might actually survive.

We have therapy every Thursday at four. AA on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Conor leaves work early for school plays and baseball games and ordinary nights he used to miss entirely. Romy laughs more. The house goes softer somehow.

Not healed. Healing. There’s a difference, and for a long time that difference seems like enough.

Conor still reaches for control at every turn. He still checks the locks twice before bed, still sits too stiff in crowded restaurants with his attention on every exit. But the drinking stops. The sharpness eases. We relearn each other carefully, rebuilding something fragile from pieces that don’t quite fit the same way they used to.

Some days I even catch myself wanting him again.

Fifteen years of marriage by then. Long enough to become stitched into another person. Long enough that leaving starts to feel less like escape and more like amputation.

Which is why I missed the signs when things began slipping again.

It’s also why I’m not worried when I notice Conor’s truck in the driveway three hours early.

Romy notices it too. “Dad’s home?” Worry furrows her brow. “Is he sick?”

Strange that’s where her mind automatically goes.

“I don’t know.”

Waylen drops his backpack beside the stairs and launches into a story about a classmate who threw up during math. I’m barely tracking it. The smell reaches me halfway down the hall.

Whiskey.

Two years. Two years and a bottle is already open somewhere in this house before four o’clock on a Tuesday.

“Hey, guys.” I force brightness into my voice. “How about you go hang out at Tom and Cynthia’s for a little while?”

Romy’s eyes sharpen. “Why?”

“Because Mom and Dad need to talk.”

Her expression changes. She knows. She’s always known.

Waylen just shrugs. “Can I take the Switch?”

“Yep. Go get it.”

Tom answers on the second ring. Twenty minutes later, I watch their SUV disappear down the street with my children sitting next to their children before I lock the front door behind me.

The whiskey thickens near Conor’s office. The door stands an inch open. I push it wider.

He’s on the floor beside his desk in shirtsleeves, a bottle near one knee, photographs scattered around him like wreckage. When I realize some are of a teenage boy in a football uniform, I cover my mouth.

Conor looks up. His eyes are bloodshot and destroyed. “Hey.”

The word barely exists.

I crouch just out of his reach. “What happened?”

He laughs into the silence. “They arrested him today.”

“Who?”

But I already know.

He picks up one of the photographs instead of answering. A football team. Teenage boys lined shoulder to shoulder beneath stadium lights. His finger presses against one face. Middle school, maybe. Dark-eyed. Serious. A boy who doesn’t know yet what’s coming. Or maybe he already does.

Young Conor.

“They found pictures and videos.” His voice thickens. “Boxes of them. Pictures. Tapes.” He swallows. “Kids.” His face twists into something no human should ever witness, let alone feel. “Me.”

I lower the rest of the way to the floor.

Conor stares at the photograph. “I didn’t know he had a camera when he…” He lifts the bottle and takes a long pull. Half gone already. “He kept trophies. Newspaper clippings. Team pictures. Notes on all of us.”

I don’t speak. There’s nothing to say that could provide any measure of comfort.

“I destroyed everything with me in it.” The confession settles between us. “I wasn’t thinking like a cop. I was thinking like a terrified kid.”

That’s the sentence that undoes me. Not the abuse, not the photographs, not the decades of buried shame. The realization that he’d been a terrified thirteen-year-old boy trying to survive, not the detective he’d eventually become. He’s carried the consequences of that for a quarter of a century inside a body that learned control was the only reliable form of safety.

I understand him completely in that moment.

It doesn’t fix anything. But it’s the most transparent I’ve ever seen him.

Because there are no words, I wrap my arms around him. Conor folds against me so suddenly it nearly knocks me backward, his face dropping into my shoulder and what comes out of him is body-breaking grief that’s been buried alive for decades.

I hold him through all of it.

Because despite everything—despite therapy and fear and the separation papers I burned the memory of—I love my husband. And in that moment, holding him on the floor while daylight fades through the office windows, loving him is almost indistinguishable from drowning.

I thought that day would pull us closer.

Instead, he pulled away.

Damage spreads quietly, like water inside walls. You don’t know it’s there until the ceiling starts to bow.

At first, it’s small things. Canceled therapy. Missed AA. Conor sleeping on the couch, claiming he doesn’t want to wake me. The drinking returns, but not every day, which is almost worse. It’s unpredictable enough that all of us start adjusting around it without discussing it out loud.

Romy watches him again. Waylen starts asking whether Dad’s “in a good mood” before entering rooms. The house reshapes itself around his moods the way it used to, and I watch my children become experts at reading weather patterns that have nothing to do with the sky.

Conor grows quieter too. Distant. I sometimes catch him looking at me with something that edges toward resentment, and I understand it. He hates that I know. Not about the coach. About the boy he used to be. That humiliation lives between us. He can’t forgive me for witnessing it, and I can’t pretend I didn’t.

One night I find him in the dark kitchen holding an unopened beer like he’s trying to decide whether the effort to open it is worth it. Another night he comes home after midnight smelling like perfume that isn’t mine. I don’t even ask. That’s how tired I am by then.

Months later, he gets written up at work. The drinking stops again after that. But sobriety doesn’t bring him back this time. It just leaves all the bitterness sitting out in the open with nowhere to hide.

By then we’ve become experts at fighting quietly. No screaming. No shattered dishes. No neighbors calling for help. Just low voices hateful enough to cut each other in places that don’t show, while the children sleep upstairs.

Fifteen years.

You can destroy a marriage without anyone hearing a sound.

Six days before I disappear, I sit in my SUV in the parking lot of a divorce attorney’s office two counties away.

My hands are steady on the wheel, which surprises me.

I’m not afraid Conor will hurt me. I want to be clear about that, even just to myself, sitting alone in this car. I don’t think he’ll harm me again, physically at least. What I finally understand, after fifteen years and one failed legal separation and a Thursday therapist and two years of genuine trying, is something quieter and more permanent than that.

We’re poisoning each other slowly enough to call it marriage.

Last week, Waylen asked me why our house feels different from his friend Jacob’s house. I asked him what he meant. He thought about it for a long time with that serious look he gets, the one that’s been on his face since he was born.

“Jacob’s house feels like it’s resting. Ours feels like it’s waiting.”

Six years old.

I stare at the building. One minute. Two.

I get out of the car.

Inside, the receptionist smiles and hands me intake paperwork. I pay cash. When the attorney asks what brought me in, I hear my own voice say what I’ve been practicing.

“If a police officer has friends in every local agency, how does his wife divorce him without him hurting her or taking the kids?”

Hearing that out loud makes my marriage sound far more dangerous than it ever did inside my own head.

THIRTY-SIX

Six days after meeting with the attorney, I still haven’t told a soul.

Not Esme. Not Conor. Not even myself completely.

The paperwork sits hidden beneath sweaters in the back of my closet like it’s radioactive. Some nights I take it out and stare at it while Conor sleeps. Some nights I convince myself I overreacted. Other nights I listen to the silence of the house and think I’ve already waited too long.

Today isn’t one of those nights.

Today feels hopeful. That alone should probably scare me more than it does.

The new client’s house sits near the lake in a half-finished development. No landscaping yet. Just the skeletal shape of wealth, standing open to the sky.

I park beside a black Range Rover splattered with specks of mud and grab my portfolio from the passenger seat.

This could be big. Real money. Enough to stop mentally calculating grocery totals before sliding my card. Enough to breathe a little. Enough to remember I existed before I became the detective’s wife.

The thought sends a flicker of guilt through me. Fifteen years of marriage, and I still apologize to myself for wanting more.

I climb the temporary ramp into the open front door. “Hello?”

My voice echoes through the unfinished foyer. Then heels click somewhere deeper in the house.

A woman appears from what will someday be a kitchen, smiling warmly. Black bob. Red lipstick. Cream pantsuit that probably costs more than my monthly grocery budget. She’s beautiful in the polished way that comes from money, maintenance and confidence.

“Hannah?”

“Yes.”

Her smile widens, creating the faintest lines around her bright blue eyes. The thick tortoiseshell glasses only make them look bigger. “Suzanne Childress. Thank you so much for coming out.” Her handshake is cool and dry, the very opposite of her Southern accent.

“This place is gorgeous already.”

She laughs, looking genuinely pleased. “That’s generous. Right now, it’s mostly a very expensive drywall project.”

The tension in my shoulders eases. She’s easy to talk to. Warm without trying too hard, a woman who knows how to make people comfortable without making it visible. I wonder if we’ve crossed paths before. Maybe on the pageant circuit, years ago. It’s difficult to place her age. The blunt bangs cover her forehead, and whatever lines might exist there have been carefully hidden away.

We walk through the downstairs while she explains the build delays and designer disagreements and her desire for something timeless instead of trendy. She asks smart questions about lighting flow, textures and cabinet heights. Warm wood tones versus cooler stone.

She shows actual interest. And really listens to my feedback.

By the time we’re back to the kitchen, I’m already running numbers in my head. This could lead to referrals. Vacation properties. Maybe commercial work eventually.

I can do this.

The realization arrives so fast it almost steals my breath. Not survive. Live. From my own work. My own money. My own name on something that has nothing to do with Conor Slater.

Suzanne leans against the oversized marble island watching me study the space. Her eyelashes are much too thick to be natural. “You’re very good at this.”

Heat rises into my face. “Thank you.”

“More than one person has mentioned your name.” She gestures toward a cooler. “Water?”

August in Tennessee is brutal. “That’d be great.”

She pulls a glass bottle from the ice, opens it, and hands it to me. “Sorry…force of habit. I’m so used to opening everything for the kids.”

We talk about our children. She has a girl and a boy, close to Romy and Waylen in age. The conversation loosens further into the easy territory of school schedules and summer activities and the chaos of raising one of each.

I take several long swallows while flipping through cabinet samples spread across the counter. The water is cold and slightly mineral. Faintly off in a way I attribute to the glass bottle, the fancy brand, the fact that I skipped lunch again.

“What made you want to get back into design full time?” Suzanne asks.

“Kids getting older. And I’ve missed it.”

“And your husband doesn’t mind?”

The question catches me sideways. “He’s adjusting.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

I laugh…and a small floaty sensation starts behind my eyes as subtle as a flash of déjà vu. I blink hard. Too little sleep. Conor snored half the night and mumbled the other half, and I lay beside him deciding if I was brave enough to finally stop listening to it.

I set the water bottle down.

“You okay?” Suzanne’s voice sounds further away than it should.

“Yeah.” I press two fingers to my temple. “Just lightheaded for a second.”

“Sit down.”

“I’m fine.”

But when I step forward, the room tilts sideways. My shoulder clips the rail of a ladder. Nausea rolls through me in a long, slow wave that has nothing to do with skipping lunch.

Something’s wrong.

“What—”

My tongue sits thick and strange in my mouth. I look at the water bottle on the makeshift counter. At Suzanne’s face. At the calm, warm expression that hasn’t changed, which is the thing that frightens me most. She looks exactly the same as she did three minutes ago.

“What did you put in it.”

Not a question. I already know.

I jerk back hard enough to stumble. The unfinished kitchen swims. “Help.” The word comes out thin and useless. “Someone⁠—”

But the house sits empty. Half built. Set back from the road. No neighbors close enough to hear a woman’s voice going wrong inside it.

Suzanne moves toward me. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

I lunge for the doorway.

My knees buckle on the second step.

She catches me before I hit the plywood—strong, much stronger than she looks—and steadies me against her while my body begins the terrifying process of stopping to obey. I fight. I know I’m fighting because I’m telling my arms to push and my legs to move and nothing responds the way it should. The gap between the instruction and the result widens with every second.

Romy.

Her face arrives with absolute clarity even as everything else blurs.

Waylen.

The attorney’s office. The paperwork under the sweaters.

“Shhh.” Suzanne brushes hair from my face. “You’re just tired.”

“No—”

“You’ve been tired for a long time, Hannah.”

She begins walking me toward the door. I try to pull away. My arms register the intention and do almost nothing with it.

Outside. My car is right there. If I can get to my car⁠—

She steers me to the back door of my SUV and folds me inside before I can redirect. I try to crawl across the seat. My body moves in slow motion, and by the time I’ve crossed half the distance, she’s in the driver’s seat and my hands have stopped listening entirely.

“Conor—”

The name escapes on its own. Something moves behind Suzanne’s eyes when she hears it. It isn’t anger. This is something older and stranger. The expression of someone who has been waiting for permission to finally take something.

“You’ve had him long enough.”

Mistress.

The word assembles itself through the fog. The perfume I smelled on him and didn’t ask about. The nights he came home already somewhere else behind his eyes. He told someone about our marriage—told her enough that she brought me here—and this woman in my driver’s seat decided she’d waited long enough.

I try to speak. My jaw barely moves.

“He deserves peace.” She’s gentle. Almost kind. “You make everything so much harder for him than it has to be.”

That’s not true.

I think it clearly. I cannot say it.

“You were never really happy there anyway.” She says it like she knows. Like she has access to something I said in private, something I never said to anyone but Esme. The thought opens a cold door somewhere at the back of my mind that I don’t have the consciousness left to walk through.

He told her everything.

“You need to rest now.”

My vision doubles. Triples. Red lipstick blurs above me while I lie across the back seat of my own car watching the unfinished house slide past the window as she pulls out of the lot.

My fingers drag across the floor mat and catch against one of Waylen’s plastic dinosaurs shoved beneath the seat.

I’m trying to memorize the road. I’m trying to count turns. I’m doing everything right and it doesn’t matter, and that’s the thing I’ll understand later. Not now, because now the trees are blurring past and the light is going wrong and the last thing I’m aware of is Suzanne’s voice.

She’s humming.

Softly. To herself. The contented sound of a woman driving home after a successful day’s work.

When the darkness comes, it comes completely. But the road keeps moving underneath me toward somewhere I don’t know.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Pain wakes me first.

The deep, swollen ache of a body that’s been lying still too long. My eyelids drag open by slow degrees.

Wood everywhere. The ceiling. The walls.

I try to sit up.

Leather restraints snap tight around my wrists, and a sound tears from my throat before I can stop it. The room turns into a kaleidoscope of fractures my brain can’t hold still.

My ankles are restrained too, wide padded cuffs attached to the metal frame beneath the mattress. An IV line is taped to my arm. To my horror, I realize a catheter tube snakes from between my legs.

Humiliation crashes through me so hard it nearly overrides the fear.

This isn’t a hospital. The walls are wrong. The smell is wrong—wood and dust and something chemical underneath. Nothing like any room I’ve ever woken in.

“Help!”

Nothing. Only the low mechanical growl of a generator outside.

A clear plastic button rests beside my hand, attached to a pump clipped near the IV pole. Pain management equipment. Morphine, or something like it. The wood walls swim in and out of focus. Blackout curtains cover the windows. No daylight visible anywhere. No sense of time. No sense of place.

Memories crash back in pieces.

The unfinished house. Suzanne. Red lipstick. The water with the bitter taste.

I try to scream. The sound breaks apart halfway out of me.

Footsteps creak beyond the door, and I go completely still.

The knob turns, and a figure steps inside wearing pale blue scrubs, gloves, a surgical mask, and a disposable bonnet pulled low over hidden hair. Not a face. A shape. The door closes softly behind them.

“Please.” My voice cracks. “Please help me.”

They say nothing. Just cross to the IV line to check the tubing with practiced hands.

“Where am I?”

Nothing.

“Please.” Tears spill into my hair. “My children⁠—”

The gloved hands pause, but only for a second before hanging another bag.

The silence is worse than yelling could ever be.

“Who are you?”

I blink, and the faceless shape resolves into a woman. She reaches toward me. I flinch hard but have nowhere to go. She places a hand on my shoulder instead. The steady pressure is almost comforting, which is the most frightening part yet.

“You’re dehydrated.” Yes, it’s a woman’s voice. Soft. Southern accent.

I study her eyes. Bright blue. But the thick lashes are gone.

Suzanne.

“Please let me go.”

She doesn’t answer. She checks the catheter next. I turn my face away, heat and anger moving through me at the clinical efficiency of it. The way she handles my body like a problem to be managed.

When she finishes, she replaces the blanket over my legs. The gesture is almost gentle.

“What do you want from me?”

She reaches into her scrub pocket and pulls out a syringe.

“No.” I thrash hard enough to shake the bed frame. The restraints bite into my skin. “Please don’t⁠—”

“Hush now.” The needle slides into the IV port. Cold floods my veins an instant later.

“No no no⁠—”

The room loosens around the edges.

She pushes buttons on the pump. “Sleep now, Amanda. I’m helping your brain accept the truth.”

Amanda?

That’s not⁠—

I know that’s not⁠—

She pats my shoulder. “Your name is Amanda Baker. You’re a single woman with no children.”

That’s definitely not right.

Romy. Waylen.

The blue eyes crinkle at the corners. “Your husband is glad you’re gone. He hates you. He was disgusted by you. You have no husband now. No children. Your name is Amanda Baker.”

No!

“You have a long history of drug abuse, and you’re here to get better.” Her voice follows me into the dark. “You’re safe now.”

I open my mouth, but the words inside my brain are trapped.

She leans over me, her face only inches from mine. “You’re Amanda Baker. Single. Childless.”

Romy—

Waylen—

Their faces blur before I can hold on to them.

I wake to a voice.

Soft and unhurried, coming from a small speaker on the table I didn’t notice before. Not Suzanne’s. This one is recorded and it loops, over and over.

“Amanda. Your name is Amanda Baker. You’ve been so sick, honey. So very sick for such a long time. The things you think you remember—the husband, the children, the house, the life—those were the sickness talking. You know that now. You’re safe here. You’re finally safe. Your name is Amanda Baker, and you are home.”

I try to focus on the words long enough to argue with them.

My thoughts won’t hold that long.

The restraints are still there. The IV still drips. Outside the blackout curtains, there’s no way to know whether it’s day or night or how many of either have passed. The tape loops back to the beginning.

“Your name is Amanda Baker. You’ve been so sick, honey.”

I try to hold on to something real. A name. A face. The specific smell of a kitchen on a specific morning.

Something flashes through the dark behind my eyes.

A little girl in purple swim goggles beside a pool, laughing so hard she can barely stand. Wet hair. Sunburned shoulders.

Gone before I can hold it.

I gasp.

Another flash.

A little boy running barefoot through grass, a plastic dinosaur held aloft in one fist like a trophy.

Gone.

A kitchen in the early morning. The scent of coffee and cinnamon rolls. A voice saying my name like they’d said it a thousand times.

Not Amanda.

Gone.

Pain tears through my skull. I start crying before I realize it’s happening.

“Your name is Amanda Baker.”

“No,” I whisper to the empty cabin. “No, that’s not⁠—”

“The things you think you remember—the husband, the children, the house, the life—those were the sickness talking.”

I know that’s not true. I do. I press that knowledge flat against the inside of my chest and hold it there through another loop of the tape and another and another until the drugs pull me under again, and I can no longer tell what I’m holding or why.

The next time I surface, the scrubs are dark gray instead of blue.

Suzanne stands near the small table organizing medication bottles beneath the yellow glow of a camping lantern. The speaker sits beside them, silent now. Waiting.

My thoughts move through syrup. “How long.” The words collapse halfway out.

She turns. “Two days.”

My children have been without me for almost two days and don’t know where I am. Nobody knows where I am and the attorney’s office has my paperwork and Conor⁠—

“My husband⁠—”

“You don’t have a husband.”

“My children⁠—”

“You don’t have children, Amanda.”

“Stop calling me that.” The words come out harder than I expect. Clearer. Whatever sedation is left in my system hasn’t taken that from me yet. “My name is Hannah. Hannah Slater. I live in Sweetwater, Tennessee. I have a daughter named Romy and a son named Waylen, and I need you to call⁠—”

“I understand you believe that.”

The gentleness in her voice is more destabilizing than if she’d argued.

“It’s not a belief. It’s my life.”

She studies me above the mask. “You’ve created a very detailed internal world. That’s not uncommon with your diagnosis.”

“I don’t have a diagnosis.”

“You’ve been ill for some time.”

“I was drugged.” I hold her gaze, terrified to blame her directly. “By a woman named Suzanne Childress in an unfinished house near Lake⁠—”

She’s already reaching for the syringe.

“No.” Panic strips my voice bare. “No, please, I’m telling you the truth, just listen to me, just⁠—”

“I hear you.” She says it like she means it. “Everyone always hears you.”

The needle enters the port. Cold spreads through my veins.

“I need you to check something.” The words are slowing as I speak them. “My fingerprints. Run my fingerprints. My name is Hannah⁠—”

“Sleep, Amanda.”

“Your name is Amanda Baker.” The speaker begins again somewhere in the dissolving mist. “The things you think you remember—the husband, the children, the house, the life—those were the sickness talking.”

“The children,” I manage. One last push before the dark. “Tell someone about my chil⁠—”

But the faces are already disappearing.

Purple goggles. Plastic dinosaur. A kitchen in early morning light.

The next time my eyes open, my only company is the bright overhead lights that never turn off.

My mouth is so dry I can barely swallow. I try to call out and nothing comes but breath.

The cabin is empty. The IV pump clicks beside me. Whirs. A new dose moves into my arm with mechanical certainty, and the room doesn’t spin so much as soften at the edges, colors bleeding into one another, the wood grain of the ceiling shifting when I stare at it too long.

“Amanda. Your name is Amanda Baker…”

I know the words now. I know them as well as the children’s songs I grew up with.

I try to find the names.

The children’s names.

There were children. I know there were children because I can still feel the small body in my arms. Warm, solid and breathing.

A girl.

Her name starts with⁠—

“The things you remember were the sickness talking.”

R. Her name starts with R. I know it starts with R.

“You know that now.”

The pump clicks. Another dose.

The ceiling fractures. Faces assemble and dissolve. A woman with kind eyes, a man with a dark suit, a child with goggles, another child running, all of them faceless now, names stripped away, shapes where people used to be.

R.

It starts with R.

“Your name is Amanda Baker, and you are home.”

The word dissolves before I finish it.

I close my eyes. The tape loops back to the beginning, and I follow it without meaning to, the words moving through me like something that was always there.

“Amanda Baker,” I think, or maybe say. “You’ve been so sick, honey.”

Yes. I’m very, very sick.

Somewhere very far away, behind everything my illness has distorted and the tape has tried to correct, something small and desperate is still reaching.

The R is right there. Somewhere.

It finds nothing.

The pump whirs. The lights burn. The tape plays on.

The next time I wake, nothing’s right.

The ceiling is wrong. Too close. Curved. The smell is wrong. Old vinyl and the sterile bite of hot rubber and exhaust underneath, nothing like the pine and antiseptic of the place I’ve been. My cheek rests against cracked leather that’s warm from my own body heat and spit.

I’m in a car.

Night presses against the windows. I’m in the back seat. I try to sit up, and my arms shake so badly I nearly go back down. The IV is gone. My wrist has a small square of tape where it used to be, the skin around it bruised yellow at the edges.

My mouth is parched. My thoughts won’t hold their shape.

Where?

Just the one word. My brain can’t manage the rest of the question.

I press my hand against the window. Cold glass. Outside, orange light bleeds across a parking lot. A building rises beyond a chain-link fence. Bright windows. An illuminated sign that reads Emergency Department. The words slide apart before I can hold them.

Run.

My legs don’t work how they should. Too weak. Too long without use. I scrabble at the door handle and it gives, and cold air hits my face before I’m fully ready for the outside.

Civilization.

Concrete bites at the soles of my feet, but I register it from very far away, like pain happening to someone else.

My thoughts fracture as I run.

A staircase. Red lipstick. A football field under lights. A little girl crying. Stomp-stomp-stomp. Someone humming. Driving.

I hit the chain-link fence and nearly go down. Catch myself. Find the gap. Push through.

Headlights explode the darkness. A horn. Brakes shriek. I scream.

Voices.

“Call 911⁠—”

“Ma’am, can you hear me⁠—”

Flashlights blind me. Red lights. Blue lights. Hands. Too many hands, careful and urgent and belonging to strangers.

“What’s your name?”

My mouth opens.

My mother’s voice surfaces from somewhere very deep. “Cat got your tongue.”

I start sobbing.

“She’s freezing.”

“She’s in shock.”

“Get a stretcher.”

Hospital lights swallow the night. More needles. More voices asking questions my brain can’t hold long enough to answer.

New walls. New lights. New rooms.

“Hi, Amanda. I’m Denise, and I’ll be taking care of you today.”

Questions and questions and questions.

And every time I reach for the answers—every time I try to find the name of the little girl with the purple swim goggles or the little boy running through grass with his dinosaur held high—the memories scatter like frightened birds.

THIRTY-EIGHT

I watch Doctor Jo enter my room and check her hands for a syringe.

Nothing visible. Which means exactly nothing.

My head feels more attached today, making me distrust being in this room even more.

The walls are a pale yellow and a narrow window near the ceiling lets morning light fall in thin silver lines. A cup of water sits beside my hand. I haven’t touched it. Water comes with too many memories now. Cold glass bottle, wrong taste, a woman’s red mouth, a voice telling me I’ve had him long enough.

The gray cardigan hangs loose around me. My body is smaller than it was. Lighter in the wrong way. Like pieces of me have been scraped off during the nights I can’t account for.

Doctor Jo pulls the chair closer and sits.

I look around. No nurse outside the door. No orderly hovering in the hallway. No plastic tray with medication cups. That should make me feel safer.

It doesn’t.

My fingers grip the water cup like a lifeline. “You changed my meds.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She smiles, and it transforms her pretty face into beautiful. “Because I want to talk to you clearly.”

Clearly. That word belongs to people who aren’t me.

I study her face the way I have been for weeks. Maybe months. Time doesn’t behave correctly in this place. Her features keep bothering me—a familiarity that slides away each time I reach for it, like trying to catch soap beneath water.

“You look different today.” The observation escapes before I can stop it.

Something moves behind her eyes. “So do you.”

I don’t like the answer. I don’t like that she looks pleased by my irritation either.

I fold my hands in my lap. She does the same.

“Tell me about your childhood.”

Seriously. This psych mumbo jumbo again? “What?”

“Your parents. What were they like?”

She already knows this. “They’re dead.”

“I know. What were they like before that?”

I lean back, though the chair doesn’t give me the distance I want. At least my hands are free. My body still remembers restraints. Ankles, wrists, the bed frame, my own skin becoming a prison I couldn’t command.

“My mother cared too much what people thought.”

The answer comes easily, which surprises me. Her face surfaces in my mind, and I push the judgment in it down, though it’s like holding a ball underwater.

“And your father?”

“He stayed out of things mostly.” I pick at a nail. “Which was its own kind of problem.”

Doctor Jo watches my hands. I stop picking.

“You had a sister.”

I reach for the name. It starts with A, I think. Maybe. The certainty shifts when I press on it.

“Yes.”

“Tell me about her.”

I pick up the water cup and look into it.

Fatty Annie. Acne Annie. Children’s voices move through my head.

Flashes of her exist. A folding chair. A crown on a shelf. Dry eyes at a funeral. A voice on the phone, shredded by grief and something I said that I can’t take back.

“She needed a lot.”

“What does that mean?”

“She was emotional. Wanted attention constantly. Reassurance. She’d fall apart over small things.” The words sound cruel the moment they leave my mouth. They also sound true. I’m surprised I know them at all. “I never really knew how to be around her.”

“That must have been exhausting.”

“It was.”

“For you.”

I study Doctor Jo’s face. The professional distance in her voice thins for just a second.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m curious what it was like for her.” She shrugs. “Standing beside you her whole life. Being compared constantly. Being the awkward one. The needy one. The one people barely noticed because you were so easy to look at.”

“I can’t help what I looked like.”

“No.” She lets the word settle. “But you could help some of the rest of it.”

My pulse works too hard. “Such as.”

“The scissors.”

I forget to breathe.

The memory is there—I can feel the shape of it before it opens—and for a moment, I push back against it, the way you brace against a door you already know won’t hold. Then it opens anyway.

Dark bedroom. Friends hushing each other through giggles, egging me on. Hair spread across a pillow. Scissors cold in my hand.

School pictures the next morning.

My mother’s scream.

Anna standing in the bathroom mirror with jagged pieces around her face, so still she looked carved from the same silence she lived inside.

The water ripples against my fingers. I set the cup down.

“How do you know that?”

Doctor Jo doesn’t answer right away.

The silence presses against my skin. Does this woman know my sister? Has someone told her these things?

“She told you.” It’s the only explanation I can come up with. “Someone told you.”

“No one told me.”

The room shifts. Or maybe I do.

I look at her face harder now. Past the professional softness. Past the smooth hair and clear skin and calm mouth. Past Doctor Jo. Something underneath waits. Something old I can’t locate but can feel the outline of, the way you feel a word sitting just behind your…

Cat got your tongue.

“I don’t understand what’s happening.” But some part of me does.

That part starts screaming from very far away.

Doctor Jo leans forward. “You’re right about one thing.”

Don’t tell me.

My breathing goes shallow. “What?”

Her voice lowers into the register she uses when she wants me to trust the floor beneath my feet. “Your name isn’t Amanda.”

The air disappears.

Your name is Amanda Baker. You’ve been so sick, honey.

The tape whispers in my mind without warning. Not from the speaker, but from somewhere inside me, installed so deeply I can’t locate the source. I press my hand flat against the table and push through it.

“Your name is Hannah.”

The name strikes something buried and alive.

And the winner is…Hannah Fox.

Hannah Renee, chin up.

It is my honor to present, for the first time, Conor and Hannah Slater.

Mommy. Mama. Mom.

The images come too fast. Purple goggles. A plastic dinosaur held high. A sun-streaked kitchen. A ring slipping onto a finger. White roses. Rain on a windshield. Red lipstick. A girl with uneven hair staring at herself in a bathroom mirror.

Doctor Jo doesn’t have to say it, but she does. “Hannah Fox Slater.”

I start to shake. The chair vibrates with it.

She’s giving me back pieces of myself, but they come with hooks.

The room bends around me. I look at her face again. This woman I know and don’t know, both things true simultaneously, and my mind cannot survive the space between them.

“And I’m your sister.”

The words hit like a hallucination.

“This is your baby sister, Joanna Ellen. Isn’t that a pretty name?”

But the pretty baby Joanna turned into an awkward and angry Anna. An Anna with acne and bitten nails and eyes that made rooms uncomfortable. An Anna who missed my wedding. Who vanished. Who lost a baby. An Anna who cried into a phone while I said things that were awful and true.

Doctor Jo sits across from me with clear skin and elegant hair and cheekbones sharp enough to cut light.

I stare at her face.

The one thing my mother taught me to recognize before kindness, before grief, before love—before anything else—rises through the chaos.

“But you’re pretty.”

She flinches.

It’s a small reaction. Barely a movement. But it’s enough.

The flinch becomes the crack, and everything rushes through at once. Anna in my tiara, Anna at the funeral, Anna’s voice on the phone, Waylen crying under a bed, Romy screaming that she hates me, my mother’s voice cutting through thirty years.

One pretty girl and one smart girl.

“No.” I push back from the table so hard the chair scrapes the floor.

Jo-Joanna-Anna stands. “Hannah⁠—”

“No.” The room flashes white at the edges. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re lying.” My voice climbs past the place I can control it.

Someone knocks outside the door.

This stranger who says she’s my sister doesn’t move. “Give us a minute.”

“No!” I lunge for the door, but my legs don’t know whether they belong to Hannah or Amanda or someone still tied to a bed frame somewhere in the dark. “Let me out!”

The handle rattles under my hand.

Locked.

I claw at it anyway.

Jo-Joanna-Anna reaches for me. I swing blindly. My palm connects with her shoulder, her cheek, I don’t know. She says my name.

“Hannah.”

That makes it worse. Because it sounds right. Because it sounds stolen. Because it sounds like something being used against me.

The door opens. Denise appears with two orderlies behind her.

“What the hell happened in here?”

I try to tell her.

Doctor Jo is Joanna who is Anna. Amanda isn’t real. Hannah is real. My children are real. The cabin is real. Everything is real and none of it fits inside my head.

What comes out is screaming.

Hands catch my arms. I fight them. I fight because I have children. I fight because I had a name before they took it. I fight because the woman across the room is impossible and my mind would rather tear itself apart than make her true.

“Don’t touch me!”

Denise’s voice cuts through the noise. “Get her down before she hurts herself.”

Jo-Joanna-Anna says something I can’t hear.

Her face blurs. For one second, the Anna I know is under all that beauty. A wounded girl behind a pretty woman’s face, looking at me the way she always did. Waiting for me to see her. To understand that every room we’d ever walked into had somehow become about me. That while everyone worried whether I’d stand out enough, no one noticed her disappearing.

The needle appears.

“No.” My voice breaks completely apart. “No. Please. No more.”

A sting.

Cold floods through me.

Jo-Joanna-Anna’s face bends above me as the room melts, and I hold on to the one thing I won’t let go.

Purple goggles.

A plastic dinosaur.

Romy.

The name burns bright for half a second.

Just before the dark takes it.

PART THREE

THIRTY-NINE

JO

For four days, I’ve been waiting for Conor to be arrested.

For four days, I’ve been waiting for Hannah to be ready to finish our conversation.

Neither has happened.

Blake is still attempting to build a case. Hannah is still fragile. Neither situation has resolved itself, and I’ve run out of ways to make patience feel productive.

Hannah sleeps with one hand curled beneath her chin, the way she did when we were children sharing a room at our grandparents’ house during summer visits. Back then she always claimed the side closest to the fan and kicked me if I crossed the invisible line she’d drawn down the center of the mattress.

She looks nothing like that beautiful girl now.

Her hair is spread across the pillow in dark, uneven pieces because she hasn’t allowed anyone to touch it since her admission. Her skin carries the dull, fragile look of a very sick patient kept under too many medications and too much fluorescent light for too long.

The woman in this bed has spent twenty-one months being called Amanda Baker. Twenty-one months swallowing pills designed to smooth every rough corner of her mind. Twenty-one months losing herself one dose at a time.

I’ve been reducing her medication slowly. More carefully than before. Each adjustment is calculated, each response documented, each day measured against the last. The fog is lifting, but fog doesn’t lift evenly. It thins in patches and thickens again without warning, and four days of careful work hasn’t brought my sister back.

Some moments come close enough to hurt. She opens her eyes and looks at me like my face means something. She says Jo sometimes. Anna other. She connected it all enough to call me Joanna once. Other times she stares through me and asks why I keep calling her that.

Yesterday afternoon, she cried for twenty-three minutes without knowing why.

This morning she threw a plastic cup at the wall because Denise called her Amanda.

Progress, in psychiatric medicine, can look like a woman screaming the right name.

The room is dim except for the thin bar of afternoon light cutting through the blinds. River Valley hums around us in its usual rhythm. Carts rolling. Doors clicking. Someone crying down the hall. Someone shouting about snakes in the ceiling.

The world keeps moving even when everything inside it has gone wrong.

I sit beside my sister and wait.

Waiting has never been my gift. I’m better with action. Assessment. Strategy. Pressure applied at the correct angle until something gives. Sitting still beside a hospital bed while other people determine the pace of reality is like being slowly consumed by upholstery.

Conor hasn’t been arrested, but he also isn’t free, exactly. Nothing about his life resembles freedom right now. Blake questioned him for nearly eleven hours before releasing him without handcuffs. They took his phone, his laptop, his department tablet, every device they could justify touching. They searched the house and storage unit with a warrant broad enough to make his attorney curse into a voicemail for three uninterrupted minutes.

The house remains sealed.

The Slater home, with its polished floors and family photographs and Hannah’s handwriting on the calendar still flipped to August, sits empty behind crime scene tape while strangers move through drawers and closets and attic boxes looking for a dead woman who is breathing seventy-one miles away.

Three people in the world know Amanda Baker is Hannah Slater. Blake. Me. And the woman in the bed, who can barely hold the truth long enough to call it true.

Conor knows none of it. He still believes his wife is missing. He believes I believe in him. He believes Blake is building a case against him using Hannah’s clothing, a wedding ring and circumstantial evidence that usually makes innocent men appear guilty and guilty men appear doomed.

He doesn’t know I’m the one who turned everything over.

The morning after I spoke to Esme, when she told me to “bring Hannah back,” I went on a mission to do just that.

There was a key. The key led to a storage unit. Blake had the rest handled by nightfall.

Monday morning, Conor was on administrative leave. Chief Jenners called it temporary. Standard. Procedure. All the useless words that sound polite while delivering devastation. Conor’s face barely changed as he absorbed the news in his parents’ living room with Waylen on the floor building a Lego spaceship and Romy sitting on the stairs pretending not to listen.

People expect rage to look loud. They miss the quieter version. The bloodless mouth. The still hands. The way a man goes calm because panic would give too much away. Or because he’s innocent and terrified.

Both wear the same face.

Rose and Stanley took us all in because the house is off-limits and because the Slaters handle crisis the way other families handle a storm warning. With extra blankets, food on the stove, voices lowered around children, whiskey nobody opens until after the kids go to bed.

I sleep in Conor’s childhood bedroom, his arms holding me close.

His old baseball trophies line the shelf across from the bed, beside framed photographs of a boy with scraped knees and a crooked grin. No Hannah smiling down on me from above the headboard. No wedding photographs. No calendar frozen on August.

For four nights, I’ve lain beside my husband beneath a navy quilt while his parents move quietly through the house and his children sleep down the hall.

For four nights, Conor has reached for me in the dark.

I let him.

The role requires devotion. Grief requires bodies to hold on to, even when those bodies are lying. And leaving now would be admitting defeat. But that truth sits shallower than the one beneath it.

Leaving now would mean losing access to the children.

Waylen crawls into our bed before sunrise every morning. He arrives silently, blanket trailing, and wedges himself between us like a much younger child. Conor folds around him each time without fully waking, one large hand settling across the boy’s back.

Each morning, I lie with my arm trapped beneath a child who is mine by law and marriage and in every way the law cannot yet see.

My nephew.

My stepson.

Both true. Neither fit.

The same is true for Romy, who doesn’t come in.

Romy watches.

From doorways, from stair landings, from the far end of the kitchen island while Rose reheats food and answers phone calls in careful voices. She watches Conor touch my shoulder. She watches me pour Waylen’s cereal. She watches her grandparents disappear into the study with the door closed.

She watches every adult in the house choose words the way people choose footing on ice.

The night of the banquet, after Rose and Stanley brought the children back from the hotel vending machines, Waylen stood in the hallway clutching a packet of sour candy and asked where his dad had gone.

I crouched in front of him before anyone else could answer. “He’s talking to some people about your mom.”

That was true.

Romy’s expression cycled through hope and suspicion and fear so fast it was almost clinical. “What people?”

“Investigators.”

“Why?”

Because I handed Blake evidence. Because your mother’s ring was inside a storage unit rented under a name nobody recognized. Because the story everyone accepted is beginning to rot from the center. Because every adult in your life has failed you in a different way.

“Because there are new questions.”

Romy found Esme near the ballroom wall afterward, still holding her phone and wearing the expression of a woman who understood too late what she’d set in motion.

Romy shoved both hands into Esme’s chest hard enough to send her stumbling. “Why did you do that?” Another shove. “Why did you have to ruin everything?”

Esme’s face crumpled. She reached for Romy, and Romy recoiled.

“She left.” Romy’s voice cracked on every word. “She left us, and you keep making it worse.”

Rose pulled Romy away. Stanley moved Waylen down the hall. Conor’s father looked at me over the top of Waylen’s head, and for the first time since I married into their family, his expression held something I hadn’t put there.

He wasn’t suspicious of me.

He was suspicious of everything.

That’s what happens when a family’s story fractures in public. Everyone starts searching for the piece that cut them deepest.

I found Conor in the TBI parking lot after Blake released him. His shirt was wrinkled. His eyes were red. He smelled of stress sweat, bad coffee and mint gum.

He took my hand and his face crumpled. “I didn’t do this.”

I folded against him and told him what he needed to hear. “I believe you.”

Belief isn’t innocence. It’s just the shape loyalty takes when the truth isn’t clear yet.

Rose thanked me the next morning in her kitchen while I poured coffee. “Thank you for staying with my boy.” Her voice cracked on the last word.

I couldn’t meet her gaze. “He’s my husband.”

It was the best answer I had.

Rose pressed both hands over her mouth and cried without making a sound. Stanley walked in, registered her face, and walked back out. Men of his generation can broker land deals and destroy people with a phone call, but a crying wife baffles them.

I put the coffee down and held my mother-in-law while she shook.

That’s what I’ve done for four days.

I’ve held people.

Rose in the kitchen. Waylen before school. Conor in the dark.

Romy never lets me close enough, but I try anyway.

Between all of it, I come here.

Mark Holloway sent one text three days ago.

Take the time you need.

No warmth. No follow-up. No mention of Cathy Davis, who screamed herself hoarse yesterday morning after another medication adjustment. Denise told me that when I slipped into the nurses’ station before dawn.

“She keeps asking why nobody listens.” Denise rubbed both hands over her face. “Same loop for almost an hour.”

Why won’t they listen?

Cathy has been asking that for two years.

Amanda Baker has been asking it too. And she was right. Which means River Valley has held at least one woman under the wrong name while the world searched elsewhere.

There are patterns inside this building. I feel them the way a tongue finds a chipped tooth. Medication charts with gaps. Admission notes that don’t quite align. Mark’s signature appearing where it shouldn’t. But patterns aren’t proof, and proof moves slower than terror.

Hannah shifts in the bed.

Her fingers flex against the blanket. Once, twice. After four days of watching every small movement like it might become an answer, small things are everything.

I check that her door is fully closed and no shadows hover outside the window. “Hannah?”

Her eyelids flutter.

For one disorienting second, I’m back in our childhood bedroom, listening for the change in her breathing after we’d been fighting, waiting for her to forgive me first because Hannah always forgave like she was doing me a favor.

Her eyes open.

She looks at the ceiling first. The blinds. The IV pole. The walls. Then me.

Recognition takes longer than I want it to. Longer than I can stand.

“Jo.”

The name I go by now. Rough and fragile. But mine.

“I’m here.”

She blinks. “Anna?”

The name hurts. “I’m here too.”

Her gaze moves over my face as if she has to assemble me in pieces. Hair. Eyes. Mouth. Nose. Not the one she remembers.

“You keep saying that you’re here.”

“I know.”

“Why?”

Because I need to bring you back. Because I need to undo what was done to you. Because your children need you.

“Because you keep forgetting.”

A faint crease forms between her brows. “Forgetting what?”

The hallway goes quiet in the eerie way hospitals sometimes do before the next wave of noise crashes in. I smooth her blanket.

“Me.”

That lands somewhere real. Pain or memory or both. Her mouth trembles before she shuts it down. Hannah always could shut things down.

Even now. Even after everything.

“If you’re my sister, Joanna. And if I’m Hannah…” The words come slowly, each one fighting through mud. “How did I get here?” Her gaze searches my face, the one that doesn’t look like me. “And why are you here too?”

FORTY

HANNAH

The woman calling herself my sister doesn’t answer right away.

A person shouldn’t hesitate when the truth is simple. You were sick. You had an accident. Someone brought you in. The longer the silence stretches, the more I understand that whatever comes next will require both of us to survive it.

Jo watches me with eyes I know and don’t know. Her face is different in ways I can’t fully name. The bones of her are familiar. Everything built on top of them isn’t.

She’s beautiful.

That’s the part I keep snagging on.

Anna wasn’t beautiful. Anna was watchful and angry. It leaked out of her no matter how still she tried to hold herself. This woman has Anna’s eyes and a stranger’s face, and somewhere in the distance between those two things is seventeen years I don’t know how to account for.

Jo’s hands rest in her lap, as still as Anna’s once were. “The truth is that you are Hannah, and I’m your sister Joanna.”

“This is your baby sister, Joanna Ellen. Isn’t that a pretty name?”

“I’m here at River Valley because I’ve been working here for a little over two years. The reason you’re here…” An array of emotions cross her features, all too fast for me to name. “It’s complicated.”

I almost laugh because nothing about this room feels simple. Not the bed. Not the IV. Not the strange hollow weakness living inside my body where something stronger used to be.

I try to push myself higher against the pillows. My arms tremble with the effort, and Jo adjusts the bed control before I can ask. The mattress lifts me slowly. My stomach rolls with it.

She reaches for the cup on the tray table and holds out the straw. “Small sips.”

I should resent the instruction, but I nod like an obedient child.

Water hits my tongue and instinct overrides caution. I drink too fast.

She lowers the cup. “Slow.”

A doctor’s word. A sister’s word. I don’t know which one I want from her.

“Tell me everything. Please…” I’m not sure what to call her. Doctor Jo no longer seems right. Neither does Anna. “What should I call you?”

“I go by Jo now.” She sits back down and folds her hands in her lap. Stares at me and finally nods, like she’s made up her mind. “You, Hannah Slater, disappeared twenty-one months ago.”

The room fades at the edges.

For a moment there is only that number.

Twenty-one.

Twenty-one months is a life. Bills and seasons and birthdays and school pictures and groceries rotting in a drawer because someone forgot the peppers were in there. Twenty-one months is a year and nine months of my children’s faces changing without me there to see it.

“That can’t be right.”

“I’m sorry.”

She means it. I can tell she means it, and that makes it worse. People only look like that when there’s no better version of the truth waiting behind the one they’ve handed you.

“How old am I?”

Jo’s throat moves. “Forty.”

Something breaks open inside me.

Forty.

I’m forty years old and I don’t know how I got here and I don’t know what I missed and I don’t know my own children’s faces well enough to picture them in my mind.

The tears come before I can stop them. Hot and embarrassing. Too young for the woman I apparently am and too old for the girl still trapped somewhere under all this unknowing.

“I don’t remember turning forty.”

Jo’s expression is so sad it nearly ruins me. “We didn’t have any background on Amanda Baker for the chart. We didn’t know her birthday or anything beyond the name you told the paramedics when they found you on the road.”

Bare feet on gravel. Headlights exploding the dark.

That makes sense in a way that frightens me.

“You said I disappeared.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Her gaze drops to the blanket for half a second. “There was a note. A packed suitcase. A ticket in your name to Paris. You were seen going through security at the Atlanta airport.”

Red lips.

Wood walls.

A voice coming through a speaker in a loop.

“The things you think you remember…”

“I didn’t do that.”

Her smile is gentle. “I know.”

“How do you know?”

Jo leans forward, elbows on her thighs. “Because I knew you wouldn’t leave your children.”

I search myself for the certainty to confirm it and find only the want of it. The desperate, ragged want of it. I want there to be one thing about me that survived all this intact.

I wouldn’t leave them.

I couldn’t.

“So…I do have children?”

The question comes out wrong. Too thin. Too frightened. Like asking whether the sun still exists because I haven’t been outside in too long to trust my own memory of it.

“Yes.”

I knew it. Part of me has always known. “How many?”

“Two.”

A sob climbs my throat, and I press my hand against my mouth to hold it back. Two children. Two children and I don’t know their names and I don’t know their faces and I’ve been lying in this bed being called Amanda Baker and turning forty while they⁠—

“The things you think you remember were the sickness talking.”

The words hiss through my head. I press them flat. They don’t fit anymore. They scrape against something stronger than medication.

“I don’t know their names.”

“You’re still coming back. That doesn’t mean they’re gone.”

“But I don’t know their names.”

Jo’s control flickers and she becomes Anna again. The freeze when someone looked at her. The twitch when they looked away. The watchful eyes flashing with hurt. Old knowledge living in the body long after the mind stops trusting it.

“Romy.” Jo closes her eyes. “And Waylen.”

The names open a door.

Romy first. A screaming newborn. A girl at a kitchen island with one foot hooked around the stool leg. A Christmas sweater with a reindeer on the front. “Mom, you’re not even listening.” A slammed door, and the satisfaction of knowing she felt safe enough to be angry.

Waylen comes softer. Small hands sticky with syrup. Sleepy and warm against my chest. A dinosaur shirt worn until it was nearly transparent. A boy laughing so hard he hiccups and then laughing harder at the hiccup.

A sound comes out of me. Ugly. Animal.

Jo starts to rise but stops herself. Settles back in the chair.

“Where are they?”

“They’re safe.”

“Where?”

“With Conor’s parents.”

A man’s hand.

A badge.

Whiskey under mint gum.

Pain shooting through my wrist.

A cast.

Stairs.

I flinch before I can stop myself, and Jo sees it. Anna has always seen too much.

“They’re together,” she says carefully. “Romy and Waylen. They’re safe.”

“Do they know I’m here?”

She lifts her chin. “No.”

The word opens another wound.

“Why?”

“Because nobody else knows who you are yet.”

I stare at her. “Only you.”

“Me and a special agent I’ve been working with.”

A special agent. My sister really has been looking for me.

“What happened?” I push the question past everything else building in my chest. “After I disappeared.”

Jo unfolds and refolds her hands. “Something felt wrong. The story had gaps. A woman who adored her children doesn’t board a plane and disappear.” She pauses. “Your friend Esme was adamant.”

Esme.

The name breaks another memory loose.

A coffee shop. Blueberry bagels. A laugh too loud for the room. A hand covering mine on a table.

“You’ve known for a while. You’re just waiting until you can’t ignore it anymore.”

I press my fingers against my eyes. “She contacted you?”

“Eventually. We compared notes.”

A new fragment surfaces without warning. Not from Esme. From this room, or a room like it. Fluorescent light. A circle of chairs. Women’s voices. My own hands in my lap. A doctor who looked a little lonely at the start of session, though I couldn’t have said why I noticed.

“You should be glowing. Newlywed, right?”

I don’t know whose voice said it. I don’t know whose voice answered. I don’t know why it surfaces now, why it presses against the inside of my skull like it’s important.

Another voice, rougher, from the same circle.

“He hurt you?”

“Men do that. Hurt. Lie. Call you a different name.”

I blink. The fluorescent light disappears and the room sharpens back into afternoon. Jo is still watching me.

“Where did you go?” she asks.

“I don’t know.” I study the ceiling. “I think I remembered something. From in here, inside this place.” I refocus on her face. “One of the other patients. She was angry at a doctor, and she kept saying that men lie. That they call you a different name.”

Jo seems pleased that I remember. “Cathy.”

“Yes.” The name feels right. “I don’t know why that surfaced.”

“Brains make connections before the rest of us catches up.”

She folds her hands in her lap again, and I look at them. Still. Careful. Anna always held herself like that, like stillness was the only form of control available to her. She held herself that way at our parents’ funeral too, sitting beside me in black while I sobbed through the whole service. I kept waiting for her to break open so we could be inside the same thing for once.

When they started singing “Amazing Grace,” I reached for her hand.

Anna looked down at my fingers.

Then forward again.

I’d forgotten how much that hurt. Sitting here, all these years later, the hurt returns. The shame of an outstretched hand that nobody takes.

I look at her face. The bones I know beneath the face I don’t. The eyes that have always seen too much and said too little.

I gave her nothing, and I owe her so much.

I reach out and watch as my hand crosses the space between us, trembling with more than weakness. I set it palm up on the blanket, just inches from her knee.

For one long second, she just looks at it. Tears shimmer in her eyes. Then she places her hand in mine.

Her fingers are warm. Steady. Nothing like I expected. Nothing like the stiff, careful stillness she’s carried since I opened my eyes. She holds my hand the way someone holds treasure they were afraid they’d broken.

My thumb finds the ring on her finger, traces the diamond.

“What’s your husband’s name?”

Jo’s fingers tighten around mine.

She doesn’t look away.

“Conor.”

FORTY-ONE

JO

Conor’s name leaves my mouth and lands like a grenade.

As Hannah grapples with the information, satisfaction sparks through me. Not the ugly, vindictive kind I might have expected from this moment. This is quieter. This has waited a very long time to exist.

All my life, everyone gravitated toward my big sister. She was the one who walked into a space already knowing where she belonged, already certain the room would rearrange itself around her. Every crown, every photograph, every admiring glance. She absorbed them as though the universe had simply gotten the allocation right.

Now she’s the one struggling to catch up, to understand everything she’s lost. And the hurt little girl inside me wants to dance around the room and sing songs about being the winner.

I let myself have the moment.

Then Hannah says two words that end it. “My Conor?”

Of course she still thinks of him that way. Even here. Even in a hospital bed with twenty-one months stripped from her life and her name erased and her children a blur…she still reaches for ownership. Still clutches the crown.

Hannah hasn’t changed. Hannah will never change. The possession is so reflexive she probably doesn’t even hear it leaving her mouth.

The satisfaction doesn’t disappear. It just has company now.

I pull my hand away. “Yes. Conor Slater.”

Her mouth works as her brain attempts to catch up. “But I’m married to him.”

“Not anymore.”

Confusion floods her features. “Not anymore? How.”

“The investigation concluded you’d left voluntarily. Conor filed for a no-fault divorce by publication.”

She stares at me. “By publication?”

“When someone can’t be located, notices get published in newspapers. Eventually the court allows the divorce to move forward. It took about six months.”

Hannah blinks. Trying to process it. Trying to hold all of this information at once when her mind is still learning to hold anything.

“So everyone believed I left?”

“They believed what the evidence suggested.”

“Except Esme?”

“Except Esme.”

Her eyes narrow. “And you?”

I watch the tears gathering. Watch her struggle to hold herself together the way she always has, through sheer force of being Hannah, through the performance of composure she learned so young it became indistinguishable from the real thing.

“Yes.”

Her expression softens. Not in relief. Not quite. This is closer to gratitude, which is dangerous territory, so I look away first.

“You married him.”

“You were missing.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No.” I meet her gaze again. “It’s not.”

The silence stretches between us like a specter.

Hannah studies my face again. Looking for Anna, I suppose. Looking for the girl she remembers.

She isn’t going to find her.

“I needed access,” I finally say. “To the house. To Conor’s finances. His routines. His friends.” I realize I’m twisting my wedding ring and stop. “Most of all, I needed to be close to Romy and Waylen. If their father had done something to you, someone had to be there for them.”

The tears spill over. “You did all that for me?”

The question twists deep in my chest.

I don’t answer.

Some questions are safer left in the air.

“You’re beautiful.”

A laugh breaks out of me before I can stop it.

Hannah looks confused. “You are.”

“I suppose I look very different from Fatty Annie.”

Color rushes into her face.

Even now. Even after everything.

She remembers.

“I’m sorry.”

I wave it away. “Water under the bridge.”

It’s easier than the truth, which is that Fatty Annie became Doctor Jo through an extraordinary amount of money and stubbornness. Two rhinoplasties. Veneers. Fillers. Laser treatments. Dermatologists. Personal trainers. Hair appointments every six weeks for years. A long, deliberate process of carving myself into someone no one overlooked. Someone no one dismissed. Someone no one pitied.

The strangest part is that it worked.

At least on the outside.

But she doesn’t need to know any of that.

“I’m serious.”

“I know you are.” I let the guilt sit on her face a moment longer. “I grew up.”

She twists her fingers together. “You did. You got married.” She frowns and some new memory sparks behind her eyes. “Did you lose a baby?”

The room. The chair. All of it. Gone.

Only that phone call remains. Luke’s voice, strained and uncertain, telling Hannah what had happened and handing me the phone. Hannah’s voice going from kind to something else so fast I didn’t understand what had happened until the line was dead.

“We didn’t lose a baby.” My voice sounds like someone else’s. And I guess it is. That voice sounds like a mother’s. “I delivered a dead son.”

Hannah’s face crumples. “Oh.”

“I delivered him at thirty-four weeks.” The words scrape on their way out. “I held him.” My throat tightens around what comes next, but I say it anyway, because we’re opening things that have been closed for years and there’s no point doing it halfway. “I named him Asher.”

Hannah presses a shaking hand over her mouth. “I’m so⁠—”

“Then I hemorrhaged.” The emptiness inside me—the holes—ache. “And when I woke up, it was without a uterus.”

Silence. Heavy and absolute.

For once in her life, Hannah doesn’t know what to say.

Neither do I.

“I thought it was a miscarriage,” she finally whispers.

“It doesn’t change anything.”

She flinches.

The anger that lived in me for years doesn’t have the same edges it used to. It still cuts. But differently.

“I’m sorry.” Tears slide down her face. “I was horrible to you.”

“Yes.”

She looks down at the blanket. “When your husband called everything was falling apart. I’d had three miscarriages of my own and was dealing with a collapsing marriage. When I spoke to you, I was overwhelmed and upset and I⁠—”

I can’t listen to this. Can’t listen to her list all the ways her life is more important than mine. “Hannah.”

She stops.

“Let’s keep going. What questions do you have?”

She adjusts her pillow, settling back into the bed. “What happened after Conor divorced me?” The question comes quietly. It has a different register than the ones before it.

My phone vibrates in my pocket, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

I stand. Hannah watches me, confused.

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

Her brow furrows. “Who?”

I glance toward the door, to the shadow hovering behind the window. “The man investigating your disappearance.”

FORTY-TWO

HANNAH

The door closes behind her.

Behind Jo.

Behind Anna.

I still don’t know which name belongs to this person anymore.

The room feels quieter without her in it. Or maybe that’s just because my head is too full. Conor. The divorce. The death of a nephew I never knew existed. The hysterectomy. Twenty-one months. Romy and Waylen. Everything keeps circling back on itself until I can’t tell where one thought ends and another begins.

Most of all I can’t stop thinking about Anna—Jo. About the lengths she went to. The marriage. The investigation. My children.

I try to imagine if I would do the same thing for her. The answer comes immediately, and I deserve to burn in hell for it.

The door opens before I can sit with that realization too long.

A man steps inside. He’s dressed like every detective I’ve ever seen. A rumpled suit under broad shoulders. His mussed dark hair softens the otherwise official appearance. The exhaustion in his face seems earned. He pauses just inside the doorway, and his gaze follows Jo to where she stops beside the window.

It lingers there for exactly one second too long.

I recognize the look. I’ve been receiving versions of it my whole life, and I know what it means even if the man wearing it doesn’t.

He steps closer to the bed. “Mrs. Slater.”

The title sounds like it belongs to someone else. “Hannah’s fine.”

A small smile touches his mouth. “Hannah, then.” He takes the chair. “I’m Special Agent Blake Graves with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Is it all right if Dr. Slater stays? In case you need medical assistance.”

Mrs. Slater.

Dr. Slater.

I glance at Jo.

She stands near the window, hands folded, waiting.

“Yes.”

Blake settles into the chair and opens a notebook. “Before I walk you through what we’ve learned, I’d like to hear what you remember. As much as you’re able.”

The request catches me off guard. My memory is shattered. “What do you want to know?”

“The last thing you remember before you were admitted here.”

Wood walls. An IV. A nurse in a mask.

But there’s something before that.

I close my eyes and press toward it.

Red lips. A Southern accent. An unfinished house that smelled like sawdust.

“I was consulting on a house.”

The memory arrives in pieces. A blueprint spread across a makeshift counter. A kitchen gutted down to the studs. A woman leaning against an oversized marble island.

“I met someone there.”

“What was her name?”

I reach for it and find only the image. A smile. Perfect teeth. Dark hair. Thick lashes that couldn’t have been natural.

“I don’t know. She was pretty. She had dark hair and was wearing red lipstick. She had a Southern accent.”

Blake writes it down without comment. “What happened next?”

I swallow. “She offered me water. I started feeling strange.”

The memory shifts and blurs. The house. The woman. The glass bottle sweating in her hand. The taste that was slightly wrong.

“I felt dizzy. Then sick.” I pull the blanket closer. “Then I woke up somewhere else. A cabin, I think. There were injections. A nurse.” I shake my head. “The same woman, I think. Wearing a mask. Then I woke up in a car and…” I press my hands against my temples, willing the fragments to come together.

Blake doesn’t push. Doesn’t fill the silence. His patience calms my nerves.

“Is there a nurse named Denise here?”

Jo shifts by the window. “Yes.”

“Then I think I was here.” It’s all such a terrible blur. “There were other women. Screaming sometimes. A patient named Cathy.” I look at Blake. “They called me Amanda Baker.”

“Why that name?”

“Your name is Amanda Baker. You’ve been so sick, honey.”

“Because that’s what I was told.”

Blake glances at Jo, who shrugs.

“What else do you remember?”

“Nothing as important as what I forgot.”

“What you’ve told me is consistent with what we’ve learned.” Blake sets his notebook down. “Can I walk you through the investigation?”

“Please.”

He starts at the beginning. Jo approaching him back in October with concerns about a woman’s disappearance, and Blake realizing that the woman was the wife of a detective in a department that wasn’t supposed to investigate its own.

Jo’s concern had prompted Blake to take another look at the case. Evidence that had seemed solid began to loosen at the edges.

“Jo never believed you left voluntarily,” he says.

I look at Jo. Jo looks out the window.

“Seems most people thought I’d run away.”

“Most people did.” Blake nods to my sister. “Not her.”

Something in his voice makes me glance back at him. It isn’t infatuation exactly. Respect, absolutely, but also something more complicated than that.

“She kept digging.”

Of all the pieces on the table, I can force two more into place. Jo is my sister. Jo is the woman who married my husband to find me. We may have drifted apart, and she was once the last person I thought would save me. But now…

Blake keeps going.

“Last week, Jo was going through your family videos at the house.” Blake picks his notebook back up. “She told me that she heard you use a phrase that was familiar, so she started looking closer. After several videos, she realized that Hannah and you both had a specific way of holding your mouth when speaking. That’s when she told me that things clicked for her.”

Jo’s still looking out the window.

“Clicked?”

Blake nods. “She told me that, although you look very different now from when she last saw you seventeen years ago, and very different from the Hannah in the pictures and videos, she made the connection. That, beyond all probability, you were Hannah Slater, her sister.”

It still didn’t make sense. “How did I get here?”

He smiles. “That’s what we’re still figuring out. And figuring it out started with Jo carefully reducing your medication so that you’re able to speak to me. That’s why I’m here now.”

“No.” I shake my head. “Not here. Here.” I gesture around the room. “How did I end up in River Valley?”

“According to hospital records, you were found near Memorial Hospital. You were confused, malnourished and unable to identify yourself. When it became clear you needed psychiatric evaluation, you were transferred here.”

Flashes of memory flood back. “I remember waking up in the back seat of a car. Running. A sign for an emergency department.”

Blake writes that down. “Do you remember getting in the car? Who was driving it?”

I close my eyes and search my memories. “No.”

“That’s okay. If any of the memories come back, just let me know.”

I look past him to Jo.

Twenty-one months. A fake name. A psych hospital. A marriage that no longer exists.

Somehow, through all of that, my sister found me. Considering how I treated her, it’s a miracle she bothered. She could have just left me here to rot.

Why didn’t she?

“You really never gave up?”

Blake glances back at Jo.

“No,” he answers for her. “She didn’t.”

I focus back on the conversation I had with Jo before this agent came in. “You’re here because of Jo? Because she married Conor to get access to him and to protect my children?”

“Yes.” Blake’s jaw tightens. “That’s what she told me. The first real break came from Jo last week.” Blake closes the notebook. “She found a key.”

I pull my attention back to him. “A key to what?”

“A storage unit.”

“We don’t have a storage unit.”

Blake nods. “This one was rented by a woman.” He leans forward and studies me closely. “Suzanne Childress.”

The name hits like cold water.

“You know that name.”

It isn’t a question.

“Yes.” My voice barely works. “She was the woman at the house.” I pull the blanket up, suddenly cold, suddenly afraid. “Where is she?”

Blake frowns. “We’re still searching for her.”

The woman who did this to me is still out there?

“Suzanne Childress rented the storage unit the month you disappeared. Paid two years in cash.”

That part feels important, but I don’t understand. “Why does that matter?”

He holds my gaze. “Inside the storage unit were your clothes. The same ones you were seen wearing the day you supposedly boarded a flight to Paris. Your wedding rings were inside that unit too.”

It still doesn’t make sense.

“If Suzanne Childress rented the storage unit, then why do you suspect Conor?”

Jo wipes away a tear.

Blake leans forward and presses his fingertips together. “Because Jo found the key in Conor’s desk drawer.”

FORTY-THREE

JO

The paperwork alone takes nearly two hours.

I’d planned for one, which means I underestimated the cruelty of institutional bureaucracy. The way it expands to fill whatever time remains, regardless of urgency, regardless of the woman who has been sitting in a hospital bed for twenty-one months under a name that was never hers.

Signatures. Forms. A phone call to an administrator who needed to speak with another administrator. A brief, professionally worded standoff with the billing department that Blake resolved by producing his credentials and stony silence.

I spend most of it in the hallway outside Hannah’s room while she rests, close enough to hear if she needs something, far enough away to think.

The plan was supposed to be simple. If Hannah was stable enough, we’d quietly walk her out of River Valley today before anyone had time to construct an objection. No press. No drama. No moment where the wrong person asks the wrong question. Blake was supposed to handle the paperwork while I handled Hannah and by the time River Valley’s administration fully understood what had happened, we’d be gone.

Simple.

Hannah leaps at the chance to leave. Signs—as Amanda Baker—where Blake asks her to sign. Answers his questions with so much focused concentration that I can practically see her battery draining from the effort. She’s exhausted and she’s frightened and she’s furious, and yet doesn’t have the clarity or strength to let the fury out.

When Hannah finishes signing the papers, Blake asks if she has any additional questions. Hannah says nothing. The Hannah I grew up watching would have had seventeen follow-up questions. This woman simply closes her eyes.

I find Tammy at the nurses’ station.

“Is Ms. Baker’s final paperwork ready?”

Tammy glances at the patient board. “Not yet.”

I understand why. I really do. The staff of the men’s unit were hit with a stomach bug, and the remaining staff have been spread thin to cover.

“I need it to happen now.”

She holds my gaze for a beat, measuring something. She opens her mouth, closes it and reaches for the phone.

The final paperwork materializes ten minutes later. So does Denise, appearing from somewhere down the corridor with the unerring instinct nurses develop for anticipating disruption. Confusion wrinkles her forehead when she sees Blake.

“What’s happening here?”

I hold in a groan. I like Denise, but I’d also been pleased to learn that she was assigned to the men’s unit today. She asks more questions than I have the bandwidth to deal with right now.

Blake produces his credentials. “I’m removing Ms. Baker from the facility. She’s assisting with an active investigation.”

Denise blinks. Her gaze moves from Blake to me to Hannah, still resting on her bed, then back to Blake. Questions stack behind her eyes, curiosity running headlong into professional boundaries. The boundaries win. Barely.

Mark Holloway appears a few minutes later. He looks irritated, like his day has just grown significantly more complicated. “You could’ve consulted me before making this decision.”

Blake’s expression doesn’t change. “The decision wasn’t yours to make.”

Mark’s jaw tightens. For a moment, I think he’ll push back. Instead, he exhales—long and slow, a man choosing his battles—and turns his attention to Hannah.

“Good luck.” He sounds like he means it.

Without another word, he walks away, and I relax a little. Yet another confrontation that fizzled out before it began.

Which bothers me more than a confrontation would.

Denise steps closer to Hannah’s door. “I’m glad you’re doing better.”

Hannah looks at her for a long moment. A nurse who called her Amanda for twenty-one months. A nurse who was, in all likelihood, simply doing her job. Hannah knows this, I think, because she doesn’t crack her open with the truth. She merely holds her sweater closer. “Thank you.”

The rest of the administrative process grinds through its final twenty minutes. When it’s done, the three of us move toward the corridor that leads to the exit.

“Do I really get to leave?” Hannah looks like she’s waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under her feet.

I pat her shoulder. “Yes, you do. I promise.”

When we pass the group therapy room, I recognize Hannah’s hesitation. Her pace changes, and she makes a choice she knows I won’t approve of. I’ve been watching people make that calculation my entire career, and I’ve never once found a reliable way to stop it.

“Amanda, don’t⁠—”

Too late.

The door swings open, and Hannah bursts into the room.

Conversation dies instantly. A dozen faces turn—patients, counselors, a staff member near the window—all of them staring at the pale, thin woman standing inside the doorway like she’s just walked out of a wall.

I know what this is, and though I know I should pull Hannah from the room, I don’t.

Twenty-one months of being told she was wrong about her own name. Twenty-one months of medication that made her own thoughts feel like strangers. She couldn’t walk past that door.

The need to stand in that room and be right, just once, isn’t stubbornness.

It’s survival.

That doesn’t mean it won’t be a disaster.

Hannah lifts her chin. “I told you all that my name isn’t Amanda.” Her voice cracks on the last word. “It’s true.” She points at me and Blake. “And they believe it too.”

Silence. The absolute kind, the kind that happens when a room collectively stops breathing.

Cathy stands so quickly her chair crashes backward. She points at Hannah with a shaking hand, wild-eyed and desperate and something that looks terrifyingly close to vindication. “I knew it.” The words burst out of her. “I believed you because they stole my name too.”

The room fractures. Questions. Voices. A woman near the back crying. Another patient repeating “what” to no one in particular. Staff begin attempting to de-escalate this before the temperature rises past a certain point.

Cathy moves forward on legs that barely hold her. “I told them. I told every single one of them and they said I was crazy and they never⁠—”

Two staff members reach her. She twists between them, not fighting exactly, but not yielding either, still talking, the words coming faster than I can track. Mark appears in the doorway, and I mentally groan. Doesn’t he know that he’s the gas on Cathy’s fire? Does he care?

“Everyone sit down.”

Nobody listens to him.

Cathy laughs, and the laugh tips into something rawer. She looks directly at me. Not Hannah. Me. Across the chaos of the room, across the staff trying to guide her toward the door, she finds my face. “Tell them.”

Two words. That’s all. But they land with the full weight of every year she’s spent in this place insisting she was someone else while everyone around her wrote it into her chart as a symptom.

Then she’s gone, guided into the hallway, her voice fading.

Beside me, Blake grumbles, “What the hell was that about?”

What the hell indeed?

Instead of answering Blake, I watch Dr. Mark Holloway calm the remaining patients. He’s good at it. Which is why it’s so difficult to locate the splinter under my skin.

Vindicated, Hannah backs into the hallway. Blake follows. I’m last.

The three of us stand in the corridor while the muffled sounds of River Valley settling filter through the walls, and I look down the hallway where Cathy disappeared and try to think it through.

I’ve spent months telling myself she was delusional. Paranoid. A textbook case of erotomania layered over a psychotic break, her fixation on Mark Holloway a symptom of the illness rather than a response to a cause. The aggressive medication made clinical sense given her episodes. The chart supported it. Every individual piece of her treatment was defensible.

The pattern I noticed weeks ago is staring back at me. I’d talked myself out of the theory before. Never again.

“Can I talk to you for a second?”

Blake follows me a few feet down the hall. “What is it?”

I glance toward the group room. Toward the hallway Cathy vanished into. “Something’s been sitting wrong with me for months.” I organize my thoughts. “Cathy Davis. She’s been here for many years. She’s been insisting she’s someone else the last two or so years, the same way Hannah was and she has the same escalating medication profile.”

Blake pulls out his notebook and writes the name down.

“I spent months convinced she was delusional.” I meet his eyes. “I’m not convinced anymore.”

He looks down the corridor. “You think she’s another Hannah?”

“I think someone should find out.” I hug myself against an emotional chill. “Start with Cathy Davis. And her relationship with Dr. Mark Holloway.”

Blake holds my gaze for a long moment before jotting that down too.

Behind us, Hannah leans against the wall with her eyes closed and her arms wrapped around herself. A small smile plays on her mouth. I’m glad to witness it.

I think about a woman who spent twenty-one months being told she was sick.

I think about another woman who has been here even longer.

The splinter has festered.

At least now, the process of finding it is in motion.

More exhausted than I’ve ever been in my life, I take my sister’s arm and lead her down the hallway.

We walk toward the exit. Neither of us look back.

FORTY-FOUR

HANNAH

The first thing I notice is the sun.

I stop just outside River Valley’s front doors and tip my face toward it. During supervised walks around the grounds, I got thirty minutes if the weather held. This is nothing like that. Nobody’s going to tell me when it’s time to go back in.

For a long moment, I simply stand there, breathing.

A laugh escapes me. Small at first, then bigger, spreading through my chest before I can swallow it back. I lift my arms and turn, just a slow rotation on the sidewalk, the building spinning and the sky spinning and the world spinning and I want it to never stop.

I’m free, and the sun is on my face, and I turned forty in that place I’m never going back to.

The laughter dies as I open my eyes.

River Valley’s glass doors reflect the woman standing in front of them.

Who is she?

I know that I’m not who I used to be. The small, cracked mirror of the sink has borne witness to that. Twenty-one months. The drugs. The bones. The hair.

Still, I’m not prepared for this person staring back.

Dark hair hangs in jagged pieces around a face I barely recognize. My skin is gray. Hollow cheeks. Cracked lips. The borrowed sweater hangs from my frame like clothing on a scarecrow.

Amanda stares back.

Beside her, Jo’s reflection appears. Perfect posture. Sculpted features. A face that looks nothing like the original. The sisters have changed positions.

Panic flares. “No.”

Jo steps closer. “What?”

I point at the stranger who points back at me. “They can’t see me like this.”

The fear arrives so fast it steals the breath I just found. Romy. Waylen. I haven’t seen their faces in twenty-one months and they haven’t seen mine. I cannot let the first thing they see be this.

“They’ll be scared.”

Jo shakes her head. “They won’t.”

“They will.” I can’t look away from the glass. “I look…”

“So sick, honey.”

Jo steps between me and the reflection. “We’ll go to my townhouse first.”

“The kids⁠—”

She takes my arms, waits until I focus on her. “We’ll go to my townhouse.” Her voice cuts through the rising panic. “You’ll take a shower. You’ll put on clean clothes.” She tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “I have makeup there.”

The words shouldn’t help as much as they do. I nod, still shaking, and let her lead me toward her car.

The drive to Cleveland passes in pieces.

The medication still lives at the edges of my thoughts, softening the corners of the world. I lean my head against the window and watch Blake’s SUV follow us in the side mirror.

Jo doesn’t try to talk to me. That’s one thing she’s always understood. When to leave a silence alone. Now, I think it’s from training. Back then, I think it was from fear.

Of me.

Jo told me that she can’t take me off all the medications at once. That the tablets will be weaned slowly, that she’ll manage it herself, that I’ll never have another needle unless I agree to it.

I fall asleep somewhere on the highway and wake when the car slows. The sign says Cleveland. We turn onto a lovely street. A row of townhouses with small front gardens and window boxes.

Inside, I wander from room to room, and the first thing that hits me is how much it looks like her. Books on every shelf. Plants on the windowsills. A ceramic pitcher the color of a winter sky. Running shoes beside the door. A life, fully assembled.

Evidence.

Jo built herself a life.

Then I notice the plastic totes stacked near the hallway. Four of them. Labeled in her handwriting.

“Why are all your things still here?”

Jo glances toward the totes. She turns away. “You’ll understand in a little while.”

I don’t ask again.

The shower takes a long time.

Hot water pounds my shoulders, and I let it. I stand beneath it until the room fills with steam, until my skin turns pink, until the last traces of River Valley finally rinses away. I wash my hair twice with Jo’s expensive products. Then a third time, because I can. I shave my legs with a fresh razor, which takes another forever. I don’t hurry any of it.

Nobody pounds on the door.

Nobody tells me I’m taking too long.

Nobody slides anything under the crack.

When I finally step out, wrapped in a towel, Jo’s things cover the counter. Face creams. Serums. Expensive perfume.

I touch it all, trying to understand who she became. The sister I left behind wore her edges like armor and her wounds like a second skin. This woman moisturizes.

A knock.

“Decent?”

“Relatively.”

The door opens. Jo carries a folded stack of clothes and sets them on the counter. Gray leggings. An oversized blue shirt. A white tank. New underwear. Socks and a pair of worn white Keds.

“Is this okay? I don’t have many clothes left here.”

Because she’s married to my husband.

I bat the thought away and study her instead. She looks like Anna when she asks. Not the face—never the face anymore—but in the uncertainty behind it. The way she waits to find out if it’s enough, that old Anna habit of offering something carefully and bracing for the answer.

“These are perfect, thank you.” She turns to go, and I catch her wrist. “One more thing.” I hate asking. I ask anyway. “Could you even out my hair?”

Emotion moves behind her eyes. Just for a second. She looks away before I can name it. “Sure.”

I pull the vanity stool out and sit. Through the mirror I watch her open the drawer. Watch her hand close around a pair of scissors that look big enough to shear a sheep.

The sight punches the air from my lungs.

She sees my panic, and the scissors lower immediately. “Oh.”

But the memory is already open.

A dark bedroom. My friends hushing each other through giggles, urging me on. Anna asleep, hair spread across the pillow. Scissors cold in my hand, and teenage cruelty that doesn’t understand yet what it’s doing, or tells itself it doesn’t.

School pictures the next morning. My mother’s scream. Anna standing in the bathroom mirror with jagged pieces framing her face. She’d gone so still, so completely still, the way she always froze when something hurt too much to react to.

I press my hand over my mouth.

The scissors go back in the drawer.

“Hannah.”

“I’m sorry.” The words break apart. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. You⁠—”

“I was awful to you.” I can’t stop now that it’s started. “I was jealous and mean and I never…” I drop my face in my hands. “You called me after losing the baby, and I didn’t listen. I never listened. I never once paid attention to what you needed because I was too busy⁠—”

“Hannah.”

“No.” I shake my head. More tears. There have been so many tears today that I’m almost embarrassed by them. “There’s no excuse. There’s no version of it that isn’t just me being selfish.”

The silence stretches long enough that I think she won’t answer.

To my surprise, Jo pulls me into her arms.

We’ve never held each other like this. Just her arms around me and my face pressed into her shoulder and the seventeen years of distance between us collapsing into something smaller than either of us expected.

I break.

Jo holds on.

Eventually I surface. Embarrassed. Emptied out. Strangely lighter.

Jo runs a washcloth under cold water and presses it to my face, wiping my eyes like she might do for a child. Then she steps back and opens the drawer again. This time she produces a small pair of styling shears and holds them up, a small smile playing at her lips. “Better?”

A wet sound escapes me that’s almost a laugh. “That was mean.”

She laughs too, though she has the grace to also look embarrassed. “Yes, it was.”

She trims the ends methodically, evening out the damage, cutting only to the length of the shortest piece, right at my shoulders. When she’s finished, she studies the result with critical focus, making small adjustments until it’s perfect.

Without me asking, she dries and styles my hair, then applies my makeup when my hands tremble too badly to do it myself.

I don’t look in the mirror. Not yet. “Thank you.”

She shrugs. “You always did have terrible taste.”

A laugh bubbles out. “Excuse me?”

“Men. Lip gloss. Sisters.” She picks up a tube from the counter. “All terrible.”

The laugh that comes out of me is real. Wet and broken and real.

She uncaps the lipstick. Rosewood pink. The shade is oddly familiar. “That’s a pretty color.”

She looks away. “It looks really pretty on you.” She slides it over my lips. When she’s finished, she presses the tube in my palm. “You can have it. I don’t like it anymore.”

Memory stirs. A pageant, years ago.

“That’s your sister?”

The laughter. Pretty one. Smart one. Handing Anna an ugly color like some consolation prize.

I close my fingers around the tube.

When I finally look in the mirror again, the woman staring back still isn’t the Hannah I remember. The dark hair changes things. The lines around my eyes have deepened. The sadness hasn’t gone anywhere and won’t for a long time.

But she’s recognizable.

Human.

Alive.

Maybe that’s a good enough start.

Blake looks up from his laptop when we walk into the living room. For a moment he simply stares. Then a slow smile breaks across his tired face. “Ready?”

The question fills the room. Heavy with everything it means and everything it doesn’t say yet—the children, the house, Conor, Suzanne Childress, all of it still waiting on the other side of this door.

I look at Jo. Anna. My sister.

The woman whose things are still packed in plastic totes in her hallway.

The woman who held me while I cried.

The woman who evened out my hair.

The woman who married my husband to find me.

I reach for her hand.

She doesn’t hesitate.

How did she go from hating me to sacrificing everything for me?

FORTY-FIVE

JO

Hannah stares out the window for the entire drive to Sweetwater.

I keep my attention on the road and check the mirror more than I need to. Blake follows at a steady distance.

Hannah notices the exits, I think. The mile markers. The landmarks her body has been holding on to for twenty-one months, just below the surface.

“I’ve been thinking about something.”

I glance over at her. “Yeah?”

“I think I was taken to some cabin before I ended up at River Valley. That woman was there, and there was a recording playing a message about me being Amanda Baker over and over.”

Her memory will keep coming back. That’s both what I need and what I fear. “Suzanne Childress.”

She nods. “What I don’t understand is why she drove me to a hospital in Chattanooga?”

A truck moves into my lane, and I brake hard. Hannah startles badly. “Sorry.” I consider her question. “Maybe she wanted to make sure you were found somewhere far away from the place you were held?”

Hannah rubs her temple. “Yeah. But why let me go at all? Why not just…” She swallows hard. “Why go through all the trouble of pretending I got on a plane?”

I wish Blake was here to answer her questions. But he’s not, so I tell her what I think he’d say. “Maybe she got scared? Or maybe her entire goal was to simply drive you mad and release you. I’m not sure Blake knows yet either.”

“But why? I only met her once. Why would she hate me so much?”

I turn this over carefully. Blake and I have discussed it multiple times over the past couple days. In his office and on the phone, running through every theory that fits the evidence. “Honestly? Blake and I’ve gone back and forth on that. One of his theories is that she was trying to hurt Conor somehow. Another is that she wanted to remove…competition.”

Hannah frowns. “Competition.”

“Maybe she believed she had some claim on him. That with you gone, things would be different.”

Hannah turns back out the window. “And he married you instead.”

“Yes, he married me.”

Neither of us speaks for a moment.

Hannah faces me again. “It’s strange that I ended up at River Valley. At the same place you work.”

“It is strange.” I take a sip of water from my bottle. “What’s equally strange is that you aren’t the only patient there claiming to be someone else.”

“Cathy?”

“Yeah. Blake is looking into all of it.”

Hannah picks at her fingernails. “You think it’s connected?”

“I think Blake intends to find out.”

She turns back to the window. I watch her reflection process it, and I see the moment she decides, for now, to let it rest.

“Do the kids know I’m coming?”

The shift catches me slightly off guard. “No. Blake called Conor and asked him to have everyone at the house. Didn’t tell them why.”

She makes a sound that might be a laugh. “Didn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

“Something like that.”

Her bottom lip trembles. “How are they?”

I think about Waylen wedging himself between us in the dark before sunrise. Romy watching from doorways. “They’re holding together. They’ve been staying at Conor’s parents’ house since he was taken in for questioning. Waylen is Waylen.” My eyes burn. “Romy is Romy.”

Hannah almost smiles. “That bad?”

“That strong.”

A smile plays at her mouth “And Conor?”

“He doesn’t know I found you. He thinks Blake is building a case against him. He’s been on administrative leave.”

“Why are they staying at his parents?”

“Because your house was considered a crime scene and was searched thoroughly. It was released last night.”

She frowns. “After all this time?”

“Yes. From what I understand, the house was never searched after you went missing.”

“Oh. Since you found the key in Conor’s desk, they thought there might be more evidence against Conor?”

“Yes.” I hand her the other bottle of water. “Drink a little bit, okay.”

She stares at the bottle and doesn’t take it from my hand.

I put it back down. “What’s wrong?”

Her blink rate increases. “I think Suzanne Childress put drugs in the water bottle she gave me.”

I crack the lid of the bottle, the plastic crinkling under my fingers. I take a long sip and set it back down. “If I start to pass out, grab the wheel.”

She laughs softly. “You might have to test all water bottles for me for the rest of forever.” But she picks it up and takes a small sip.

It’s nice to see her smile. Maybe this whole experience hasn’t ruined her after all.

Her breathing turns shallow and quick somewhere around the Sweetwater exit, and she presses her fingers flat against the window glass like she’s steadying herself against a threat.

I don’t say a word.

Some things don’t need commentary.

When I turn onto Conor’s street, she makes a sound. Just one. Quiet enough that I almost miss it. The neighborhood closes around us—the familiar curve of the cul-de-sac, the oak trees, the houses with their tidy lawns and evening lights coming on—and Hannah’s hand moves from the window to her chest.

The house appears at the end of the street.

Gray stone colonial. White trim. The columns I’ve spent months walking between. The porch swing nobody ever uses. The flowerpots I water every other day.

I know this house the way you know a place you’ve been trying to belong to.

Hannah knows it the way you know your own name.

I park at the curb.

Neither of us move. The engine ticks as it cools. In the mirror, Blake pulls in behind us and cuts his lights.

“Ready?”

Hannah looks at the house for a long moment. “No.” She opens her door anyway.

The early evening air is warm, the sun low enough to cast long shadows across the lawn. Hannah walks ahead of me up the front path, and I follow at a slight distance, watching her take it all in. I can’t help but wonder how much of it she remembers.

She reaches the front door and her trembling hand closes around the knob like it did for fifteen years. Turns it. Locked.

She stands there, confusion coming off her in waves. This Hannah can’t comprehend that her house doesn’t welcome her inside it.

I reach into my bag, pull out my keys and find the right one without having to look.

Hannah watches me slide it into the lock.

Neither of us says anything about it.

The door swings open. Hannah steps in. I’m right behind her, a hand on her back.

The house exhales, and I’m hit with the scent of Sunday dinner and ordinary evenings. Rose stands at the stove with her back to us, stirring something in a large pot.

Stanley sits in the armchair in the living room. The evening news murmurs from the television. Waylen is on the floor between the coffee table and the fireplace, trains arranged in a careful loop across the rug, making engine noises.

For one glorious second, the scene is perfectly normal.

I look at Hannah.

She looks at Waylen. Tears slide down her face.

“Mom?”

It comes out small. Uncertain. Then Waylen is yelling it, screaming it. He scrambles to his feet so fast he sends a train car skidding across the hardwood. Still screaming, he runs and launches himself at Hannah like a rocket, both arms around her waist, his face buried against her stomach. The sound Hannah makes is one I’ll carry for the rest of my life.

She drops to her knees and wraps herself around him completely. His face disappears against her shoulder and hers disappears in his hair, and I look away because this isn’t mine anymore.

Rose spins from the stove. Her hand flies to her mouth.

Stanley is already on his feet, the news forgotten, staring at the woman on the floor of his son’s living room with an expression I don’t have clinical language for.

Upstairs, a door opens.

Footsteps. Cautious. Romy appears at the top of the stairs.

She takes it in from the landing. Hannah on her knees. Waylen refusing to let go. Rose with both hands pressed over her mouth. The whole tableau of an impossible moment.

Romy comes down one step. Stops. Comes down two more.

Her gaze finds mine across the entryway.

With the biggest smile my mouth will manage, I nod.

Every emotion flashes over her face, and then she’s moving, no longer careful, taking the last stairs fast. She crosses the room and folds herself into Hannah from behind, and the three of them stay there on the floor while Rose cries and Stanley stands with his hand on his chest.

I back up until I find the corner. My place. I know how to make myself small, and I do it again now. The strange thing is how familiar it is.

A door opens down the hall.

Conor comes out of his office. His gaze sweeps the room, searching for a threat. He freezes the moment he spots the pile of bodies on the floor.

Everything stops.

The color drains from his face so fast I wonder if he might pass out. He stands in the hallway with his mouth open, taking in the dark hair, the borrowed clothes, the woman he married and divorced kneeling in the middle of his living room floor. I watch him try to find something to do with what he’s seeing.

He can’t.

His gaze moves away from Hannah, across the room and finds me.

Confusion first. Complete and genuine. He doesn’t know why I’m here. He doesn’t know why any of this is happening. He doesn’t know Blake’s call earlier this afternoon led to this.

His hands hang at his sides, useless, because there’s no version of this moment that he knows how to navigate.

Underneath it all, quiet enough that I might be imagining it, a door closes behind his eyes, shutting before I can see what’s behind it.

I’ve never seen someone so lost.

Confusion shifts to indecision as he stands between two versions of his life. His focus bounces between us.

Hannah.

Me.

Hannah.

Me.

I already know who will win.

It stops on Hannah, stays there, and I curl inside myself.

He starts toward Hannah.

Stops.

Starts again.

Hannah lifts her head, still holding both children, to find him standing there. Her expression shifts. Not one emotion. Ten. A dozen. More. They arrive too quickly for me to separate them.

“Hi.” The word comes out wrecked.

Conor crouches down. His hand hovers near her face. He doesn’t touch her. “How.” The word isn’t really a question. He doesn’t have the rest of it yet.

“I’ll explain what I know.” Hannah’s voice is steadier than I expect. She kisses both of her children’s hair. “I need to talk to your dad, sweethearts. Alone.”

Slowly, the room begins to reassemble itself. Rose pulls Waylen away with gentle hands, holding him close as he protests. Romy stands on her own, reluctant, keeping one hand on Hannah’s shoulder until the last possible moment. Stanley rests his palm on top of Hannah’s head as he passes—a benediction—and follows Rose and the children out the back door.

Blake catches my eye from his corner of the room, and we stare at each other. At this thing I set in motion.

As Hannah faces Conor, I can’t look at what happens next. I need to go. I’ve done all I can do.

Pushing myself from the corner, I move to the door.

“Jo.”

Hannah’s voice. She looks at me like I’m the only constant thing in her life. This Hannah is wearing the lipstick that was always hers and twenty-one months written into every line on her face.

“Please stay.”

So I do.

FORTY-SIX

HANNAH

Jo stays, which should be a comfort.

It is.

It also isn’t.

Because Anna has always been the witness I couldn’t escape. The one who saw me at my worst when we were young, who watched from the edges of every room I ever walked out of. And now she’s here again, in the corner, watching me stand in the ruins of a life I couldn’t hold together. Of all the people I’d have chosen to see this, she is last. She’s also the only one I trust to survive knowing it.

Selfish, I know. I only thought I’d left that old Hannah behind.

The living room has gone strangely silent, as if the house itself is holding its breath. Blake stands near the front windows, one hand resting at his side, his notebook tucked away for now. Jo has made herself small again, even in a room she has every right to stand in the center of.

I notice that now. How easily she retreats. How naturally she gives the space back.

Conor remains near the hallway, not quite in the room and not quite out of it, like he has no idea where to put himself.

The sounds from outside drift through the glass doors. Waylen’s protests fading. Romy asking questions too quickly for anyone to answer them. Rose’s low murmur. Stanley, steady and useless, in the way some men become when comfort is required and no tool exists for it.

I catch a glimpse of them. Romy. Waylen.

My children.

The thought should pull me toward the door. And it will soon enough. Right now, I study the room.

The sofa is the same. The blue throw blanket folded over the arm. The coffee table with the small chip in the corner from the night Waylen used it as a landing pad for a metal fire truck. The family photos still covering the mantel. Romy’s missing front tooth. Waylen asleep on Conor’s shoulders. Me in a yellow sundress at the lake, laughing at something I can’t remember.

Nothing has changed.

Nothing except me.

“It’s exactly the same.”

Conor follows my gaze around the room. Pride lifts his expression, turning him into a man expecting to be credited for his good deed.

Jo looks down at her hands.

All at once, I understand why her things are still packed in Cleveland. She married my husband, but he never let her fully in. He kept the photographs. The paint colors. The furniture. Our life, preserved exactly as I left it. Because he missed me? Because of guilt?

I walk to the kitchen doorway and stare at the calendar on the fridge, unable to believe it’s there too.

August.

That horrible August.

“Will someone explain what the hell is happening?”

Conor’s voice comes out raw, filled with anger and frustration. He looks at Blake, then me, then Jo, his face shifting as he tries to arrange impossible facts into something recognizable. That’s the detective in him, trying to work a case without the most important pieces.

He doesn’t know about the glass bottle of water.

He doesn’t know about the cabin or River Valley or Amanda Baker or twenty-one months of…

“You’ve been so sick, honey.”

He doesn’t know why my hair is dark or why I’m standing in front of him wearing Jo’s clothes and a lipstick color from another lifetime.

Blake steps forward. “Sit down, and we’ll talk.”

Conor doesn’t move. “No.”

“Then stand.”

A strangled laugh escapes me. Nobody smiles.

Blake gives him the shortest version. Me waking up in the back seat of a car near a hospital. Being transferred to River Valley. A woman named Amanda Baker with no history and no family and no way out. Drugs. Months.

Every sentence drains something from Conor—color, certainty, the confidence of spending nearly two years believing he understood.

When Blake finishes, I’m struck by everything he left out.

Conor’s hands close around the back of a chair, and he looks in my direction but not directly at me. “You were in a psychiatric hospital in Chattanooga?”

“Yes.”

“The whole time?”

Three words trying to compress twenty-one months into something his mind can process.

My throat tightens. “Yes.”

“I looked for you.” The words come out strangled.

I believe him.

Believing him means exactly shit.

Blake goes on before the silence can collapse the room. “Do you remember when we spoke about the clothes found in the storage unit? The outfit Hannah was seen wearing at the Atlanta airport?”

Conor’s nostrils flare. “You questioned me about that for ten hours, so yeah.”

“Do you remember the name of the woman who rented the unit?”

“How could I forget.” Conor’s knuckles go white on the chair. “I told you, over and over, that I don’t know anyone named Suzanne Childress.”

“I know what you said.”

“Then why are you bringing her up again?”

“Because I remember her.” The strength of my voice surprises me as much as the words surprise him.

Conor stares at me. “What?”

“Red lipstick. Dark hair. Southern accent. She gave me water at the house where I was consulting.” I lean against the arm of the sofa. “I passed out and then…” The memory won’t hold together past that.

“Hannah, I don’t know who that woman is.”

For one terrible second, I almost believe him. He has his sincere face on, the one that used to dismantle me at thirty paces and made me question my own recollections on a staircase with my wrist bent wrong against the floor.

I lift my chin. “Then how did the key to Suzanne Childress’s storage unit end up in your desk?”

Conor whirls on Blake. “What’s she talking about?”

“The key to the storage unit rented by Suzanne Childress was recovered from your home office.” Blake’s voice is calm. “I withheld that detail in our previous conversations.”

“You withheld…” Conor’s jaw tightens. “You questioned me about that unit. About that woman. About those clothes. You never once mentioned a key in my desk.”

Blake shrugs. “That’s where it was located.”

“No.” Conor takes a step toward Blake. “It was not.”

“Yes, it was.” Jo leaves the safety of the corner. “Because I’m the one who found it.” She crosses the room. “I found the key. I went to the unit. I found the clothes and the rings. I took everything to Blake.”

Conor stares at her as if he’s never seen her before. Maybe he hasn’t. “Why would you do that?”

Jo glances at me, the smallest smile in existence tipping the corners of her mouth. “Because Hannah is my sister.”

Silence has never been so loud.

“No.” Conor shakes his head slowly, glancing between us. “I’ve seen pictures of Hannah’s sister. You look nothing like her.”

“Yet here I am.” Jo’s fingers flex. “I knew my sister wouldn’t leave her children. I needed to find out what happened to her.”

He takes one step toward her. “So you what, married me to investigate me?”

“Yes.” Her chin lifts. “And to be close to the—” She clears her throat. “My niece and nephew. If their father had done something to their mother, someone needed to be there for them.”

Conor presses a hand to his stomach, like he’d been punched. “You let me think you loved me.”

A mix of emotions flash across Jo’s face, each too complicated to name, before she puts them away.

“You were easy to love when you needed saving.” Her eyes glimmer, but her voice stays strong. She steps closer to him. “You were grieving. Lonely. Convinced the world had misunderstood you. All I had to do was listen.”

He lifts a hand. “Stop.”

“You divorced your missing wife.” Jo takes another step. “You let me into your house. Into your bed with her picture over it. Into your children’s lives. You wanted someone to tell you none of this was your fault.”

“That’s not what happened.”

“Isn’t it?”

The air between them shifts into a hellscape I recognize. History. Anger. The intimacy built from shared rooms and late nights and knowing which nerve to press. I watch the way Conor’s hand flexes before he speaks. The way Jo’s mouth sets because she already knows what he’ll say. The way neither of them looks away first.

Something happened between them. Not just a marriage. Not just a trap. Something alive that left marks on them both.

The realization hurts. Not jealousy. Something older and smaller. The part of me that has always wanted to be chosen first, now too exhausted and too ashamed to ask for a single thing.

Conor jabs a finger at Blake. “Jo manipulated all this.”

Jo laughs once. Sharp. “Did I manipulate you into drinking again?”

I didn’t know that part.

Conor’s face darkens. “I⁠—”

“Did I manipulate you into knocking me down in my townhouse?”

“Jo.” Blake’s voice carries a warning.

She ignores it. “Did I manipulate you into putting your hands around my throat?”

The room drops out from under me.

Nobody speaks.

The silence holds for three full seconds. Long enough for me to understand that Jo’s accusation is true. Because Conor has no denial ready, because a man who had an innocent answer would already be giving it.

My wrist aches.

Not from now. From then. From the staircase and the unicorn on the step and the push that wasn’t a push that left me with a broken wrist and a mild concussion and a question I answered wrong in the hospital when the nurse asked if I felt safe at home.

I study him.

The man with the badge. The father of my children. The man I was already planning to leave.

The memory surfaces in fragments. A lawyer’s office. A folder in my lap. My wedding ring twisting around my finger while I tried to make myself do the thing I’d been circling for months.

A week before Suzanne, maybe less. Before the glass bottle of water and the cabin and River Valley and everything that followed.

She didn’t destroy my marriage.

She interrupted the part where I was leaving it.

The realization settles.

Conor starts toward me.

I hold up my hand. “You hurt her too?”

Conor shakes his head. “It wasn’t like that.”

I scoff and make a show of rubbing my wrist. “That sounds familiar.”

Conor ignores me and whirls back on her. “You don’t get to do this.”

“I do.” Jo’s voice rises for the first time, and she moves until she’s within arm’s reach of him. “I get to do this because I was there. I get to do this because I watched your children fall apart while you drank yourself numb and made yourself the victim. I get to do this because Hannah was an hour away in a psychiatric hospital under another woman’s name, and you were too busy being wounded to ask the right questions.”

The muscles in his jaw pop. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Jo is only a foot away from him now. “Say it in front of her?”

His eyes flash. “You’re a manipulative bitch.”

Jo’s lips twitch. “You have no idea.”

Blake shifts. Not intervening yet. Watching. Listening.

I understand why.

Because this is no longer about Suzanne Childress or what she did to me. Not entirely.

This is about what twenty-one months did to everyone left behind.

They stare at each other. Whatever existed between them, whatever truth I’m too fragile to yet hold, tugs at them both.

He studies Jo the way a detective examines a scene, piecing together fragments that refuse to fit.

“You set me up.” He says it like it’s a conclusion. “I don’t know how. I don’t know why.” His nostrils flare. “But everything about this”—he gestures at the room, at me, at Blake, back at Jo—“has your fingerprints on it.”

Jo holds his gaze. Says nothing.

“I’ve worked enough cases to know when someone’s been running a long game.” He steps closer to her. Not threatening. Worse than threatening. “And I intend to find out exactly what yours was.”

Blake shifts. “Mr. Slater⁠—”

“I’m not finished.” His glare doesn’t leave Jo. “I don’t know what you did. I don’t know what you think you know. But I know you.” His voice drops to almost nothing. “And I know this isn’t what it looks like.”

Jo doesn’t move.

Neither does Conor.

She wins the staring contest.

Conor turns away first, cursing under his breath. He steps to me, and the grief reappears. The wounded husband. The man who’s learned to put the right face on when the room requires it.

I’ve seen it before.

So has Jo.

So has Romy.

I cross the living room. Not to Conor. To my sister.

Jo’s eyes widen when I reach her. Like she didn’t expect me to. Like some part of her never expects to be chosen.

That truth nearly breaks me.

I stand beside her, shoulder to shoulder.

One pretty girl. One smart girl. Both of them her.

“Hannah, I know what you’re thinking, but I’m telling you…I do not know a woman named Suzanne Childress. I did not have anything to do with your disappearance. You have to believe me.”

I shift my hand two inches to the right. Jo shifts hers two inches to the left. Our fingers link.

He exhales and presses his palms together.

I hold his gaze and give him nothing.

He shifts his gaze to Jo.

She gives him even less.

He looks at Blake, who simply waits with his arms resting at his sides and his entire being focused on Conor’s face.

Something collapses in him. Not the dangerous part. That’s still there, folded back down beneath the surface where it lives. Just the fight. The argument. The version of this scene where he still walks out as some hero.

“I looked for you.” He says it to me one more time. Quietly. Like it’s the only true thing left.

“You should have looked harder.”

He drops his head. “You’re right.”

“It’s time for you to go.” My voice comes out steadier than I expect. “I need to be with my children.” I squeeze Jo’s hand. “And my sister.”

His mouth opens.

Closes.

His gaze hardens on Jo. “Whatever you’ve done, it won’t stay buried. I’ll figure it out.”

Jo lifts her chin. “Start with a mirror.”

He lifts a hand. Lowers it. Storms to the front door.

Then he’s gone.

The three of us stand in the room he just left. The sofa. The blue throw. The photographs on the mantel. Me in a yellow sundress, laughing.

Blake closes his notebook. “I’ll give you both a minute.” He follows Conor outside.

And then it’s just us.

I don’t know what happens after this.

With Conor.

With Suzanne.

With River Valley.

With Jo.

With me.

But I know one thing.

I came home to my children.

And as the sounds of them drift through the glass doors—Romy’s voice, Waylen’s laugh, the ordinary music of them existing in the world—I don’t let go of my sister’s hand.

FORTY-SEVEN

JO

One week later, I wake in the guest room and spend a few disoriented seconds not knowing where I am. Then I roll over to find a stack of boxes against the far wall.

Right. The guest room. Not the primary room anymore. Not that it was ever really mine.

Half my life still lives in here. Clothes in boxes, books in uneven stacks beside the dresser, a laundry basket waiting in the corner. At some point I need to stop living between two lives and choose one.

Every time I think about leaving, I picture Waylen’s face. Or Romy’s. Or Hannah laughing in the kitchen. And Cleveland doesn’t feel quite so urgent.

I shower, dress and twist my hair back from my face. The house is calm. School’s ended for the summer, which means the kids are still asleep. I follow the scent of coffee downstairs, and somewhere near the bottom, something scrapes across wood. Then Hannah’s muttering to herself.

She’s standing barefoot on top of the bed when I find her, one hand braced against the headboard, the other stretched toward the enormous portrait hanging above it. She glares at the frame. The frame remains unimpressed.

“What are you doing?”

She startles. “Shit, Jo.”

“Sorry.”

She presses a hand to her heart. “No, you’re not.”

“Not even a little.”

That earns a smile. One that appears more often now, every day a little steadier, a little more herself. She points at the portrait. “I want this thing down.”

“I can find a sledgehammer.”

She snorts. “I’m still weak as a kitten. I’d probably only hurt myself.”

I kick off my shoes and climb onto the mattress beside her. The bed shifts beneath our combined weight, and for a moment neither of us moves. Sisters standing on the same bed, the same husband, the same house, the same life. The absurdity of it hangs between us like storm filled clouds.

Hannah reaches the frame first. “This is weird.”

“Very.”

“Seriously.” Her gaze flicks toward me, then away. “It must’ve been awful, sleeping in here. This picture staring down. My clothes everywhere. Me.”

“Not as awful as you’d think.”

A crease forms between her brows. “Really?”

I knock on the frame. “This version of you couldn’t argue or complain.”

That startles a real laugh out of her, unguarded, a little surprised by itself. For a moment, she looks twenty again.

Together we lift the frame off the wall. It’s heavier than it looks. The bottom catches the headboard, the top clips my shoulder, Hannah curses and I laugh harder than I have any right to. Eventually, we wrestle it down onto the comforter, face down.

The portrait lies between us like a body. Hannah studies it for a moment. “You know the guest room doesn’t have to be temporary, right?”

I groan. “Not this again.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“You don’t have to leave.”

I jump down from the bed, my feet sinking into the thick rug. “I do.”

“You don’t.”

“I absolutely do.”

She folds her arms. It’s the old Hannah move, except it now carries less arrogance and more concern. “I like having you here.”

Warmth spreads through my chest. Dangerous territory. I grab the portrait before she can see my face. “You’ll survive.”

“Maybe.” She touches my arm. “You can stay as long as you want.”

My throat tightens. The invitation means belonging, a concept that’s still faintly suspicious, like a stray dog waiting for the kick.

I clear my throat. “You have plans today?”

Mercifully, she lets me change the subject. “Lunch with Esme.”

That makes me smile. The two of them have spent nearly every day together this week. Part guilt, part friendship, part shared trauma.

“How’s she doing?”

Hannah snorts. “Trying very hard not to become nationally famous.”

“Good luck with that.”

“That’s what she said.”

We carry the portrait toward the hallway together. “The kids?”

“Rose and Stanley are taking them.” Her expression softens. “Conor’s spending the day with them.”

I nod. The arrangement has been awkward but necessary. The investigation continues. Suzanne Childress remains missing. Conor remains under a cloud of suspicion he can’t quite escape. And despite everything, the children still deserve their father.

“How’s he doing?”

Her answer takes a moment. “Badly.”

Fair. I don’t know what else to say, so I don’t say anything.

She wipes a trickle of sweat from her temple. “What about you?”

“Blake said he has updates and is dropping by River Valley this morning.”

“Good updates?”

“I hope so.” I set my end of the portrait down and reach for my bag. “I see the divorce attorney on Friday.”

Guilt flickers across her face. I hate that. I hate that she’s carrying guilt for choices I made.

“We’ll get through it.”

Hannah studies me. Nods, like she believes me. I wish I did.

A few minutes later, I grab my purse and head for the front door. The house is still quiet—no children awake yet, no cartoons, no cereal bowls, no arguments. Just sunlight falling across hardwood floors.

I reach for the knob.

“Jo.” Hannah is hurrying from the kitchen, a travel mug in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other. She thrusts both at me.

“What’s this?”

“Coffee for the drive. Lunch for later.” A faint blush paints her cheeks. “If you want it.”

My mouth falls open. Hannah grins, pleased with herself.

“Eat something besides vending machine pretzels.”

I take the bag. The travel mug. There’s an unexpected lump in my throat.

“Thanks, dear.”

She rolls her eyes so hard I worry they’ll detach. “There she is.”

“There who is?”

“My annoying little sister.”

I laugh, and the sound follows me out onto the porch. When I reach my car, I glance back. Hannah stands in the doorway, coffee cup in hand, hair tucked behind one ear.

Alive. Home. Exactly where she belongs.

The realization brings relief. And an ache deep enough that I look away before I trace it to its source.

I slide into the driver’s seat.

River Valley waits. So does Blake. And if today’s visit means what I think it means, somebody’s life is about to change again.

I barely make it through three emails before Blake knocks on my office door. One glance at his face and I’m not sure if he’s bringing good news or bad.

“What did you learn?”

He lowers himself into the chair across from my desk and drops a thick file between us. It lands with a thud.

I glance at the label. Holloway.

My pulse picks up. “Is this about Cathy?”

Blake exhales. “Yes and no.”

I don’t like that answer. Not even a little.

He opens the file.

Inside are photographs. Two women. At first glance they’re identical—long blonde hair, same eyes, same smile, same face. Twins. Both of them healthy and vibrant in the photos, full-color versions of the pale, medicated woman I’ve been watching deteriorate in group sessions.

“Emily Holloway and Cara Miller.” Blake turns the photographs so they face me. “Also known as Cathy Davis.”

I look at him. Then at the photographs. Then back at him. I have no idea what he’s talking about.

“Emily Holloway.” I say it slowly. “Dr. Mark Holloway’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“The Mark Holloway who’s a psychiatrist in this building?”

“That’s the one.”

The hair on the back of my neck lifts. I press my fingers flat against the desk. “Go on.”

Blake rubs his eyes. “Emily and Cara are twins, born to Annette and Felix Miller, both deceased, formerly of Franklin, Tennessee. The Millers suffered significant tragedy over the years. Four children died in infancy, all classified as SIDS.” He pauses just long enough for it to settle. “Only the twins survived early childhood. Then, when they were ten years old, Cara Miller drowned while the family was on vacation at Lake Lanier.”

I glance down at the photographs. “Except she didn’t.”

“No.” Blake taps the picture on the left. “She didn’t. What the Millers told the world and what the Millers actually did were two very different things. They admitted Cara to River Valley under the name Cathy Davis.”

I stare at him. “She’s been here since she was ten years old?”

“On and off. She escaped at least once that we know of.” He turns another page in the file. “The Millers believed Cara was responsible for the deaths of those four infants. From what I’ve been able to gather, there was documentation—a journal—that confirmed it.”

The clinical part of my brain catalogs this immediately. Juvenile onset. Escalating pattern. The attacks on Mark Holloway that staff attributed to psychosis. The violence that came and went in waves. I’ve read Cathy’s chart more than once and none of her juvenile history appears anywhere in it. Someone made sure it didn’t.

“How did you get this far without subpoenaing River Valley’s records?”

“Dental records.” Blake allows himself a small, exhausted smile. “Twins share DNA. They don’t share teeth. Emily Holloway had a dentist in Chattanooga for five years before she disappeared. Cathy Davis, as a patient here, would have had regular dental appointments through the facility. Different records, different history, same mouth.” He closes the file. “The records don’t match. The woman you know as Cathy Davis is Emily Holloway. Dr. Mark Holloway’s wife.”

I knew something was wrong. But this?

I look at the photographs again. Emily, healthy and vibrant, barely resembles the pale, medicated woman I’ve been working with since October. The one who attacked Mark Holloway every time he went near her and screamed that her name wasn’t Cathy and nobody listened, including me.

Especially me.

“What happened to the fake Emily?”

“Cara escaped River Valley. We’re still piecing together exactly when and how, but we believe she was secretly released by Mark Holloway. Whether he knew who she was from the beginning or discovered it later, we don’t know yet. What we do know is that by the time the real Emily disappeared, Mark and Cara had been involved for close to a year.” Blake flips a page. “Emily was drugged, committed here under Cathy’s identity and Cara stepped into her life. Her home. Her son.”

“Sammy.”

“He’s six now. He’s been living with Mark and Cara since Emily was admitted. Cara was already pregnant when Emily disappeared. They had another more recently.”

I press my fingers against my mouth.

Two women. Two identities stolen. Two families dismantled from the inside by people who were supposed to protect them.

I know better than to follow that thought all the way down.

“Does Mark know what you know?”

“Not yet.” Blake leans forward. “Once I have the River Valley records subpoenaed, I can build the full picture. But I need to arrest him first, and I need to do it in a way that doesn’t give him time to get ahead of it.” He holds my gaze. “Which is why I’m here.”

I already know what he needs, but I wait.

“When Mark is arrested, Emily will need to be interviewed. She’s our primary witness and the victim. But she’s been on a medication protocol for even longer than Hannah was. Which means right now, even if I walked into that room today, she wouldn’t be able to give me anything usable.”

He’s right. Just like Hannah, the woman I know as Cathy will need to be carefully weaned off the drugs that have been foisted on her for so long.

Blake leans forward. “I need you to bring her back so I can talk to her.”

I pull more photographs from Blake’s file. In one, the woman in the picture is composed, bright eyed, standing in a garden with a small boy on her hip. She’s laughing at something outside the frame. She has no idea what’s coming.

The real Emily Holloway. Another woman whose life was stolen.

I’ve sat in a group therapy circle and watched that woman insist she was someone else, and I filed it under presenting delusion and moved on to the next patient.

The guilt lands without fanfare. I don’t drown in it—that’s not useful to anyone, least of all Emily—but I don’t push it away either. It belongs to me. I’ll carry it.

“The medication protocol matters.” I pull a notepad toward me. “She’s been on a heavy antipsychotic regimen for a significant length of time, so I can’t reduce it quickly. The withdrawal alone could destabilize her in ways that would make her even less coherent than she is now. It has to be tapered. Carefully. Under supervision.” I look up. “I won’t know how long it’ll take until I’ve started the process.”

Blake’s jaw tightens. “I knew you’d say that.”

Reeling slightly, I take a sip of the still warm coffee Hannah made me. “What’s next?”

“The arrest warrant is ready to go.” Blake taps the folder. “The subpoena runs simultaneously. Once Holloway’s in custody, he can’t touch the records.” He pulls his phone from his pocket. “I’ve got officers waiting outside for the arrest. I just need two minutes.”

Two minutes.

I’m already on my feet. “Can I tell Cath—” I catch myself. “Emily that I believe her?”

Blake looks down at the photograph one last time. “Yes. It should come from you.”

I think about Hannah, in a hospital bed who hadn’t heard her own name in twenty-one months, and what it meant to hear it finally said aloud.

“I’ll be in her room.”

I’m halfway down the corridor when I hear it. “Mark Holloway, you’re under arrest for aggravated kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment of Emily Holloway. You have the right to remain silent…”

I don’t slow down, and I don’t look back.

Emily’s door is open, and I place my hand over my racing heart and give myself exactly ten seconds before stepping inside.

She’s sitting on the corner of her bed, staring at the floor while swaying side to side. Present in body, nowhere else. Nothing like the woman in the photograph.

I pull the chair close and sit beside her.

She doesn’t look up.

I take her hand. Her fingers are cool, and for a moment she doesn’t respond. Then, slowly, she lifts her head and stares at me with the flat, medicated look I’ve dismissed and filed away for months.

“You’ve been right this whole time.” Tears burn my eyes. “Your name isn’t Cathy.”

FORTY-EIGHT

HANNAH

A month later, life has settled into a shape I almost recognize.

Not the old shape. I don’t think that one’s coming back, and I’ve made my peace with that…mostly. But it’s close enough that I can breathe without counting the seconds between inhales.

Close enough that Waylen sleeps through the night again. Close enough that Romy rolls her eyes when I ask how she’s doing, which is the closest thing to a love language a thirteen-year-old possesses. Close enough that therapy has become part of a routine instead of terrifying, and that my therapist has said things I’m still turning over. Including the one that landed hardest, the one I come back to every time one of the kids asks why Dad can’t come home.

It’s better for children to come from a broken home than to live in one.

I think about Conor more than I’d like to admit, though not in the way I once would have. The TBI found no provable connection between him and Suzanne Childress. No financial trail, no phone records, nothing that places them in the same room. He maintains he’s never heard of her, and the evidence, such as it is, agrees with him.

And the key? The district attorney said it wasn’t enough to convict on its own.

He’s back at his detective’s desk, though public opinion is slower to acquit him than the investigation was. I understand that. I also don’t know what I believe. There are moments when I think he’s exactly what he says he is—a man whose wife disappeared, who grieved in all the wrong ways, who made terrible choices and is now doing the work.

AA. Therapy. Anger management. All of it.

And there are moments when I remember that a key to Suzanne Childress’s storage unit was found in his desk, and that my clothes were inside that unit and my rings. Those two facts sit in me like puzzle pieces from different boxes.

Conor isn’t absolved. He was controlling in ways that left marks I’m still finding. The financial grip. The way rooms changed when he entered them. The stairs. But controlling isn’t the same as criminal. Whatever he did or didn’t do, my children need their father and he’s trying to be a better one.

Rose calls me every day now. That surprised me. That his mother would call me, would ask how I was managing, would say things like “I understand why you wouldn’t want to go back to that, honey” without ever suggesting that I should. She’s not what I expected from my ex-mother-in-law.

What I know for certain is more translucent. I was already leaving when Suzanne found me. The lawyer’s office. The folder in my lap. The question I remember asking, the one that had been building for months.

If a police officer has friends in every local agency, how does his wife divorce him without him hurting her or taking the kids?

My memory of those final days still comes in pieces rather than a continuous line. But I remember that question clearly now. I was going to walk away. I’m proud of myself for that.

I have primary residential custody, and Conor has generous visitation and we are all, slowly, learning what this new family feels like from the inside.

For now, that’s enough.

The splash pad at Engelman Park is packed, the June sun doing its absolute worst while two dozen children shriek themselves hoarse under arching jets of water. Waylen disappeared into it the second we arrived and has since shed his shirt, his shoes and apparently any memory of my existence. I’ve stopped trying to track where either ended up.

I’m watching Jo instead.

She’s been out there for the better part of an hour, completely drenched, hair plastered to her face, soaked silk shirt and shorts that weren’t designed for water park conditions. Waylen is chasing her through the jets, and Jo is running—actually running—and laughing so hard she stumbles into the spray and comes up gasping and laughing harder.

She scoops Waylen up and ducks his head under a waterfall arc. He shrieks. She kisses his face. He shrieks louder. She laughs harder.

She loves him.

That’s what I’m witnessing. Not Jo being good with children, not a forensic psychiatrist applying professional warmth. She loves Waylen with her whole heart.

Her love for Romy is more complicated, though just as deep. It’s hard to show affection to a child who doesn’t give easy answers or open arms. Which is its own special brand of love.

What’s important is that she loves these children, and watching her run through a splash pad in ruined clothes because a seven-year-old asked her to tells me more about who my sister is than anything she’s ever said.

The younger me would have been jealous. The forty-year-old me is simply grateful.

A movement at the park entrance pulls my attention. Esme appears first in enormous sunglasses, looking very pleased with herself. Behind her walks a woman I almost don’t recognize outside of a hospital context.

Cathy.

No. Emily.

She looks different in sunlight. Steadier. The medication is still being carefully reduced, and what’s emerging underneath it is a woman with a dry wit and a spine that’s harder than it looks. Beside her walks Sammy, six years old and serious. Holding her other hand is Nova, twenty months, suspicious of the world in the wholesale way of toddlers who have learned that new situations require evaluation. Against Emily’s shoulder, asleep, is three-month-old Nash.

I’m on my feet an instant later.

Emily sees me and smiles, and for one half second Cathy Davis flickers across her face—the pale, medicated woman in the circle of chairs—and then it’s gone. I close the distance and put my arms around her, careful of the baby, and she holds on with her free arm and neither of us needs to say anything.

We both know what the other one knows.

“You look good,” I finally manage.

“You look better than the last time I saw you.” Her eyes are warm. “And by that, I mean you look beautiful.”

I hug her again. “So do you.”

Jo arrives from the splash pad, dripping, Waylen at her heels. She takes one look at the assembled group and her whole face opens into a grin. “Hi.” She pushes wet hair off her face. “Sorry, I’m…” She gestures at herself.

Esme grabs a towel. “Drenched?”

“I was going to say refreshed.”

Waylen spots Sammy. The introductions take approximately four seconds before both boys are sprinting away with the soccer ball, leaving a trail of adult supervision concerns nobody addresses. Nova watches them go, then transfers her suspicious assessment to Jo.

Jo crouches to her level. “Hi.”

Nova stares. Considers. Renders judgment.

Jo produces a fruit snack pouch from her bag. Nova snatches the treat, suspicion dissolving in favor of practical priorities.

“Smart girl,” I tell her.

Jo grins up at me, still crouched, soaking wet, pleased with herself.

Nash stirs against Emily’s shoulder. Jo straightens and reaches toward him. Stops. Looks down at her drenched shirt. Her smile is filled with so much longing, it hurts to witness. She touches his hand, one finger stroking his small fist. The baby smiles in his sleep, and Jo takes her sunglasses from the top of her head, puts them on and turns toward the blanket.

Romy materializes with three friends, teenage girls with the collective attention span of moths near a flame. One look at Nash and they descend.

“Can we⁠—”

“Please.” Emily smiles, and Nash changes hands.

Nova toddles alongside them, picking every dandelion she spots. I have the feeling a flower crown is in the little girl’s future.

Jo watches them go. Her smile lingers a beat past the moment, and then she looks toward the splash pad where Waylen and Sammy are doing something competitive and loud with the soccer ball.

Emily arches her back before stretching out on the blanket. “I forgot how much work a baby is.”

“How are you actually doing?” Esme squeezes Emily’s hand. The two have grown close over the past couple weeks, and not just because Esme has published three major pieces on Emily’s plight.

Emily considers this with the seriousness it deserves. “Better than a month ago. Worse than I’d like. Somewhere in the middle, which my doctor tells me is exactly where I should be.”

Jo kicks her wet shoes off. “Where are you staying?”

“River Valley is covering a furnished rental while the legal situation sorts itself out.” Emily shifts on the blanket. “Their lawyers are very motivated to be helpful right now.”

“I imagine they are,” Jo says drily.

I ask the question we’re all tapdancing around. “Mark?”

“Bail. Passport surrendered. GPS ankle monitor.” Emily rubs her eyes. “He’s at a hotel near the airport.” Her nostrils flare. “He’s going to fight it.”

“He’ll lose.” Esme squares her shoulders. “I intend to write something so comprehensively unflattering about Mark Holloway that future generations will use his name as a cautionary tale.”

Emily laughs, and it’s such a pretty sound. “I’m counting on it.”

“I’m also considering a podcast. And possibly a book.”

“God help us all,” Jo murmurs.

“That’s exactly the audience I’m going for.”

The conversation shifts, and Emily tells us about Sammy starting first grade in the fall, about how he asked her last week if Nova and Nash were going to get taken away too. She told him no, and he went back to his cereal without comment.

“Does he understand?” I ask. “About Cara?”

Emily picks a blade of grass and twists it between her fingers. “His therapist says he understands more than we realized. He knew something was wrong with his mother…Cara. He just doesn’t have language for it.”

She watches him across the park, where he and Waylen are locked in what appears to be a heated boundary dispute over the penalty line.

“When I came home, he cried for about four minutes and then asked if I wanted to see his Legos.” Emily smiles, one that holds grief and gratitude all at once. “His therapist says the crying will come later, in different ways, for a long time. We’re ready for that.”

“And Nova?” Esme asks.

“She kept touching my hair, like she knew it was different.” Emily glances at the little girl, still industriously handing dandelions to Romy one at a time. “She still looks at me very seriously at times and pats my chest, probably because I’m so much thinner than Cara and the bones feel different.”

Rage flickers through me at what Mark Holloway did to his children, let alone his wife.

“Any news on the fostering becoming more permanent?” Esme asks.

Emily exhales deeply. “As of yesterday, I’m their official foster parent. The state had concerns, of course, given that I was recently a psychiatric patient. River Valley had a lot of explaining to do about that, which they did, with considerable enthusiasm.”

Jo drops her face into her knees. “Yes, they do.”

Emily appears to hold no animosity over Jo at all. “Cara’s back at River Valley. Without Mark managing her medications, she deteriorated very quickly after the arrest. She’s not stable. She won’t be for a long time.”

Jo lifts her head. “The medications Mark was prescribing for her were doing significant work. Without that management, and without the structure…the breakdown would have been rapid.” She squeezes Emily’s arm. “The kids are very lucky to have you.”

“Thank you for seeing beneath the bullshit.”

Sadness returns to Jo’s eyes. “I’m just so sorry I didn’t see it earlier.”

Emily shrugs. “It’s a pretty good setup, you have to admit. Drugging someone until they sound crazy, then admitting them into a hospital and keeping them drugged to the point no one trusts a word they say.”

Jo glances away. “Yeah. It’s a pretty good setup, all right.”

Esme pulls a water from the cooler and passes it to Emily. “Are you sure you’re ready? Two little ones on top of everything you’ve just been through?”

Emily takes a long sip, and part of me wants to bat it away from her. I still don’t trust bottles of any kind.

Emily tightens the lid. “They’re Sammy’s half-siblings. His cousins.” She shakes her head. “My niece and nephew.” The simplicity of it settles over the blanket. “I couldn’t leave them.”

“No,” Jo says quietly. “You couldn’t.”

There it is again. That thing in her voice that I’m still learning to read.

“I always wanted a bigger family.” Emily’s voice stays light, but it’s deliberate, a woman who has decided that she can do hard things. “After Sammy, I couldn’t have more.” She chews on her lower lip. “Hysterectomy.”

Jo’s hand moves to her own stomach. A small reflex, there and gone before anyone but me would have caught it. I watch it happen and think about the phone call three years ago, when Jo needed a sister. The grief I didn’t show up for. The grief she carried without me.

It’s a miracle she doesn’t hate me. It’s a miracle she cared enough to get involved at all.

The conversation moves along, water finding its level. We talk about where Emily might go when the rental arrangement ends. I mention Sweetwater, only half joking, and Emily tilts her head and doesn’t dismiss it.

Jo picks a blade of grass and begins peeling it into thin strips. “You can stay at my townhouse in Cleveland if you need a place. It’s only two bedrooms, but you’re welcome to it for as long as you need.”

My sister and I smile at each other. It’s been weeks since either of us has spoken about her moving out.

“Do you have someone to call in the night when it gets hard?” I ask.

Emily grins. “I have Esme’s number, which means I have everyone’s number.”

Esme looks briefly offended and then pleased. “I spread news and numbers, sue me.”

The afternoon softens. Waylen eventually detaches from the soccer game and drops onto the blanket, breathing hard, helping himself to a water bottle without asking.

He glares at Sammy, who has scored what appears to be a disputed goal. “That’s total bull⁠—!”

“Waylen James Slater!”

He bats his long lashes at me. “What?”

Jo is shaking beside me.

I point at her. “Don’t encourage him.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

Bullshit.

“Your whole body’s doing something.”

She bites her lip. Fails completely at neutrality. Waylen looks between us and grins, sensing the alliance he has in fact found.

I look at his face. The syrup-sticky hands and the dinosaur shirts are behind us now, replaced by scraped knees and very strong opinions about soccer, but the laugh is the same. The hiccuping laugh that becomes its own joke. He’s here. He’s entirely here, in this park, on this afternoon, and the life I’m rebuilding around him is still missing pieces and crooked in places, but it’s mine, and it’s his, and that’s enough.

When the food truck appears at the park entrance, the children detect it before any adult does. They have a sixth sense for sugar in a half mile radius. Romy comes back across the grass carrying Nash, Nova trailing behind her with a fistful of dandelions she presents to Emily like a formal offering.

Jo reaches for Nash. This time she’s dry enough, and Romy hands him over. Jo settles him against her shoulder with that automatic adjustment—the sway, the angle, the chin dipping to cover the top of his head—and the longing on her face is so clear and so fierce it moves through me like a current.

Waylen tugs my hand. “I’m starving.”

“You’re always starving.”

He points at the food truck. “Can we go?”

The adults groan as they push to their feet, but Jo stays put. “Go ahead. I’ll stay with Nash.”

Esme is already walking. Emily is negotiating with Nova about the dandelions. Romy has Waylen by the wrist, keeping him from bolting toward the food truck through sheer force of older-sibling authority.

I rub the baby’s head. “Want anything?”

Jo squints at the truck. “Pretzel with mustard if they have it.”

“You got it.” I start after them.

Glance back.

Jo is gazing down at the baby again, and it feels too personal to witness. I’m about to turn away when she glances at her car—just for a second, just a flicker—and then back down to the baby’s face.

The current moves through me again. Stronger this time.

Would she?

The thought arrives before I can stop it, and I can barely catch my breath.

Jo, who came back for me. Jo, who gave everything up and asked for nothing. Jo, who reaches for every child in her orbit with a love that has nowhere permanent to land. Jo, who lost her son and her uterus on the same day and then spent over a year building a life that wasn’t hers.

Would she?

After everything. After all of it. Could anyone even blame her if⁠—

Stop.

I stop the thought because it’s the paranoid brain talking, the one that has been through too much and now flinches at shadows. I stop the thought because Jo is a forensic psychiatrist who has spent her career understanding the exact mechanisms by which people harm each other, and understanding is the opposite of doing. I stop it because she moved out of that corner the day I came home, and I hand her coffee on her way to work. And she was in that splash pad for an hour because my son asked her to.

Jo isn’t scary little Anna anymore.

Is she?

The inner voice doesn’t answer. It just sits there, watching me watch my sister hold someone else’s baby in the afternoon light, looking like she might never let go.

Waylen shouts my name from the food truck line.

I make myself smile.

I make myself turn.

I make myself walk away.

Just the paranoid brain at work.

FORTY-NINE

JO

The park is loud and bright and full of the chaos of children in summer, and I’m sitting on a blanket in clothes that are almost dry holding a sleeping baby, which is not how I expected this afternoon to go.

Nash weighs almost nothing. He smells like baby shampoo and something sweeter underneath, and his mouth makes small movements like he’s arguing with a dream. I’ve been watching him do this, and I can’t explain why I find his every movement so compelling.

I volunteered to stay when the others left for the food truck. Nash was asleep and it seemed cruel to move him. That was the reason I gave. I didn’t mention the other one.

I gaze down at the sleeping child. He has Mark Holloway’s nose, which is unfortunate, but the rest of him seems to be working out fine.

Footsteps on the grass. I look up expecting Emily, but it’s Romy. She stops a few feet away, chocolate ice cream in hand, watching me with that careful, measuring look she’s had since I walked into the bowling alley. In thirteen years, she’s developed a stillness that will be formidable when she’s thirty. Right now, it’s just unnerving.

She reminds me of me as a child.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” She doesn’t move closer. “Can I ask you something?”

Caution stirs in my gut. “Of course.”

She takes a breath. Licks her ice cream, buying time. “Did you really marry Dad to save Mom?”

I’ve been waiting for the question for over a month now, but I’m still not sure how to answer it.

This child has seen more than any child should and has processed it all with a maturity that would shame most adults. She deserves the truth. She also deserves a childhood. Those two results are in direct conflict right now.

I make my choice.

“I married your dad for a lot of reasons.”

It’s the truest answer I have. Also, profoundly incomplete.

Romy studies me for a long moment. She understands the power of silence too.

But she’s thirteen and the ice cream is melting and Hannah is calling for her, and so she turns and walks back across the grass without another word. I watch her go.

She doesn’t look back.

I’ve never been so grateful.

The park settles around me again. Nash’s mouth resumes its argument. And something opens in my chest that I’ve been keeping closed for a long time. The hatch I don’t lift.

Maybe it’s time.

I’ve lied to many people over the last two years. Efficiently. Convincingly. With the fluency that comes from a career spent reading other people’s tells while carefully managing my own.

I lied to Conor.

I lied to Blake.

I lied to a courtroom’s worth of evidence without ever entering one.

I lied to Hannah for twenty-one months and then lied to her again when I handed her a version of the truth designed to make her grateful.

Lying to Romy is the one that comes with a price I don’t have a clinical name for.

Maybe it’s time I stop lying to myself.

So.

Here is the truth. All the way down. At least once.

I’m the reason my sister spent twenty-one months in a psychiatric facility under another woman’s name.

I’m the reason her children cried themselves to sleep for nearly two years.

I tucked them in. Read them bedtime stories. Kissed their foreheads. Fucked their father.

All while knowing exactly where their mother was.

I did that. All of it. Every piece.

That’s the result. But how I got there is less simple.

The phone call didn’t break me. That’s the part people get wrong about breaking points. They assume the break is loud, dramatic, visible. Mine was quiet. Luke handed me the phone and Hannah said what she said and I said nothing, because there was nothing left to say.

I buried Asher. The hospital burned my uterus. Grief broke my marriage.

I sat in an apartment that contained more loss than any space should have to hold, and I sat in it for three weeks and lived with the grief and the rage and bottomless humiliation.

That’s the moment I, in non-clinical language, snapped.

I’m a forensic psychiatrist. I understand obsession better than most people understand their own names. I watched it build in my own mind with a clinical detachment I now recognize as its own form of illness. The part of me that kept observing and categorizing and filing because the alternative was drowning, and drowning wasn’t an option. Hatred is surprisingly good at keeping you afloat.

My hatred was directed at a single target.

Hannah.

She’d always had everything. The face she was simply born into. The marriage that fell into her lap. The children. The house. The life that looked, from the outside, like proof that the universe had made its allocations and Hannah Fox had received the lion’s share through no merit of her own.

She hadn’t worked for any of it the way I worked. She hadn’t cut her face open or burned chemicals into her skin or spent years constructing a version of herself that the world might find acceptable. She had simply existed, and the world had rewarded her for it and then, when I needed her most, she proved exactly who she was.

I’d put the phone down.

Processed.

Planned.

And got to work.

I researched the position at the Chattanooga hospital over three sleepless nights. I rented the townhouse in Cleveland because it split the distance between work and Sweetwater. I drove past her house so many times I could have drawn the brick pattern from memory. I told myself I was watching. Understanding. Building a picture.

And I was patient.

I learned Hannah’s rhythms. Conor’s schedule. The children’s routines. I learned that Hannah took new clients by referral and by cold inquiry, that she was hungry enough for work that she wouldn’t turn down a direct approach. I found the house—vacant, under renovation, the construction paused—and made the call.

Suzanne Childress needed a designer.

Hannah Slater said yes within the hour.

The name came to me in the bath one night, and when it arrived, I actually laughed.

Suzanne. Close enough to the name nobody called me after childhood that choosing it felt like reclaiming a piece of my past. Childress. Because when I looked at the word, I first read Childless, which is what I was, through grief and biology and a surgeon’s bloody but necessary hands.

I practiced the accent for two months in my car on the drive between Cleveland and Chattanooga. Deeper, slower, further south. Georgia peach poured over smoke. I practiced until it stopped sounding like an impression.

The wig was dark and expensive, bought in Nashville with cash. The lipstick I chose was a deep, arterial red called Scarlet Conviction. The outfit Suzanne wore cost half a month’s salary.

It only took a single phone call. Hannah didn’t reject me that time.

The water was easy. The compound I used was a carefully calibrated combination that mimics acute psychiatric distress when administered over time, but in a single dose can induce rapid sedation and significant memory disruption. I’d spent six months sourcing the components, patiently and willingly operating in the margins of what my credentials could access.

She drank it because I handed it to her and smiled, and Hannah has never once in her life questioned what she’s handed when the person handing it is smiling.

I got her into her own car. I drove her to the cabin I’d rented three months earlier under Suzanne’s name, cash, a property so far off the main road that the owner had been grateful for any tenant at all. I had everything prepared. The restraints. The IV line I maintained myself. The audio I recorded to collapse the distance between what Hannah knew and what I needed her to believe.

You’ve been so sick, honey.

I had been. She should be too.

I won’t dress this up.

What I did in that cabin was methodical and deliberate and it worked. Leaving her there for nearly a week was the biggest risk I took. I had no choice.

I drove Hannah’s car to Atlanta, changed into the clothes I’d found in her trunk like a gift, tucked the forged passport I’d paid a small fortune for into my bag, and walked through security at Hartsfield-Jackson. With my bone structure and my surgical history and the cap pulled low, I looked enough like my sister to satisfy a gate agent moving three hundred people through a jetway.

I boarded a flight to Paris as Hannah Slater.

From Paris, I took the train to Brussels. From Brussels, I flew to Warsaw for a one-day psychology conference I’d found on a third-tier academic website. It wasn’t prestigious or even well attended, but it offered what I needed. An alibi, just in case things went sideways. My name on a registration list, a name badge, a lanyard, a paper trail placing Jo Adair in Poland two days after Hannah Slater’s flight landed in France.

It wasn’t airtight. I knew it wasn’t airtight. But it was good enough.

The woman on the airport cameras became Suzanne Childress in every official report. As far as anyone knows, she vanished after boarding that plane. They still haven’t found her.

In reality, I flew home. Destroyed my phone and switched carriers. Bought a new laptop. Erased myself from the digital geography of those weeks as thoroughly as I could.

Back in Chattanooga, I drove to the cabin.

Hannah was alive, which I’d planned for but hadn’t been a guarantee. The conditioning had held. She didn’t know her name. She didn’t know mine. She didn’t know anything except what I had been telling her through that speaker for a week.

I’d bought a junker car in cash under Suzanne’s name two months earlier. Nothing memorable. The kind of vehicle that exists in the margins of traffic.

I drove Hannah to a parking lot a block from Memorial Hospital’s emergency entrance—the hospital whose psychiatric overflow feeds directly into River Valley. I removed the IV line, left the back door unlocked, wiped down everything I touched and watched from my own car across the lot.

She found her way out. She was always stronger than she knew.

A burner call to 911 once she was moving. I watched until she was wheeled through the ER doors.

I felt something I still don’t have a word for. Relief. Grief. The cold satisfaction of a plan executing perfectly.

I’d already made sure Mark Holloway would be the admitting physician. He was susceptible to professional deference and personal flattery, and I had spent months cultivating both. As her admitting physician, he became the buffer I needed between Amanda Baker’s chart and my own hands.

In the months that followed, I slipped additional medication into Hannah’s food during my visits. Compounds that kept her memory suppressed beyond what her official chart would explain. Mark signed off on a protocol he believed was his own design.

It wasn’t.

Emily Holloway wasn’t part of this, I need to be clear. What happened to her was Mark’s crime, built before I arrived and I had no knowledge of it. What I had, eventually, was recognition. Because I knew what it looked like when someone stole a woman’s identity and locked her inside a psychiatric facility.

In a way, what I did to Hannah is what made me believe Emily.

People say I’m a hero.

They don’t know me very well.

Then came Conor.

I want to say I was always watching him clinically. That would be a less embarrassing story.

The truth is simpler: I wanted him before I met him.

I’d studied him closely. I knew his laugh and his schedule and the way he took his coffee and the burdens of the job he carried on his shoulders. I built the wanting carefully, brick by brick, and when he finally looked at me—really looked at me, not at Hannah’s ghost—it was the most glorious moment of my life. Like the universe finally correcting a long-standing error.

When he asked me to marry him, I leaped at the chance. The red flags were waving, I know that now. But the path to get to him had been so great there was no turning back.

I could fix him. I knew I could.

He loved me. I need to say that plainly too. Not Hannah. Me. Jo. The wife he made love to while his other wife watched from the wall. The wife in his kitchen with his wife’s calendar on the fridge. The wife in his children’s lives while those children watched the door.

No matter what came after, that was real.

That matters. Because everything that followed is harder to understand without it.

I’d studied Hannah’s life from the outside but hadn’t understood what it felt like from the inside. I’d seen the house and the ring and the children and had assembled from those pieces a life that was better than mine.

I hadn’t seen the drinking. The warm voice that was cruel. I hadn’t seen the hands that knew how to be tender before they settled around my throat. I hadn’t seen the way a man can make a room smaller by simply entering it.

And I hadn’t seen what it was doing to the children.

Romy watched me the way I’d watched Hannah growing up—from a careful distance, cataloging everything, trusting nothing. Every time I looked at her, I saw myself at her age. I understood what she was living inside.

And Waylen. Sweet, uncomplicated Waylen, who’d attached himself to me so easily and with full freedom. I watched him begin to check Romy’s face before he showed me affection. Making sure it was safe. Making sure she approved. A seven-year-old already learning to manage the adults around him.

That’s what broke the plan open.

Not Conor’s hands. Not my own fear. Waylen checking his sister’s face before he reached for mine.

I had stolen my sister’s life.

And I had to give it back.

It was my call with Esme that had shown me the way. Bring Hannah back.

With those words, I understood what I had to do. Not save Hannah, though I told myself that was what I was doing.

At the time, my motivation was far uglier.

I wasn’t trying to rescue Hannah. I was trying to save myself.

The life I’d stolen was cracking. Conor frightened me. The children needed their mother. Blake was asking questions. Every day I stayed in Hannah’s place increased the odds that someone would notice the woman standing there didn’t belong.

So I decided to return what I’d taken before anyone realized I was the thief.

The re-frame was Blake’s word. Honey trap. He offered it right before Waylen walked me down the aisle. I took it from him like a lifeline because, without a story I could live inside, I wouldn’t survive the correction.

And just like that, I was no longer the woman switching lives with her sister. I was the woman going through extraordinary lengths to save her. A woman trying to put back what she’d broken before anyone could prove she’d broken it.

The key in Conor’s desk was the ugliest part. He was a flawed man who had hurt me and hurt Hannah and let his children watch him do both, and none of that justified manufacturing evidence against him. I knew that when I slid the key into the back of that drawer and photographed it.

I did it anyway. Blake would find enough to investigate, not enough to convict. Conor would feel the weight of suspicion without the full consequence.

That was proportionate.

I used Blake too. His feelings for me were useful and I used them. He’s a good man. He deserved better. And, in the end, he’s a hero too. He solved two cases and hand delivered two women back their lives.

The next banquet I attend will be his.

Nash stirs.

He opens his eyes and looks up at me with such concentration that I feel seen for the first time. His eyes are very dark. His expression is, against all reasonable expectations, solemn.

“I know,” I tell him.

He blinks.

Across the park, the group is moving back. Hannah’s dark hair swinging. Esme’s enormous sunglasses. Emily with Nova on her hip, the little girl already falling asleep against her shoulder. Romy walking slightly ahead of everyone, that small distance she always keeps.

I watch them approach.

And then I’m on my feet. Nash against my chest, my arms adjusting around his small body.

My car is forty yards away.

I have my keys.

Nash weighs almost nothing.

The plan assembles itself with cold, familiar efficiency. The route out of the park. The drive south.

A baby needs almost nothing in the first months—warmth, milk, the sound of a voice. I could be across the Tennessee border before anyone knows the direction I’ve taken. I have planned around larger obstacles than a park in June.

I could.

I stare into this precious baby’s face, and Asher stares back. This Asher is alive. Breathing.

His little fingers curl around mine.

I let myself look at the plan directly for exactly three seconds. The whole shape of it. What it would take. What it would cost. What it would give me.

What it would take from others.

With a soft exhale, I look up.

Hannah has stopped walking. Thirty yards away, her face has changed. The laugh gone, replaced by worry, replaced by doubt. She’s watching her sister stand up with another woman’s baby, and I can tell she knows.

Our eyes meet.

The plan folds itself up quietly and puts itself away.

Not because I’m a good person. Not because it’s wrong, though it is. Because Hannah is looking at me with the first real uncertainty she’s allowed herself since I told her who I was in that hospital room. Standing here with Asher against my chest and forty yards between me and my car, I cannot be the reason that look becomes something worse.

I’ve caused enough harm.

That’s the whole of it. I’ve caused enough harm, and the children are whole, and my sister is alive and has been laughing in afternoon light, and somewhere in the arithmetic of what I’ve done and what I’ve given back, the scales haven’t balanced and never will. I have to live with that for the rest of my life.

Pressing my lips to Asher’s hair, I breathe him in one more time and I start walking toward them.

Toward Hannah, who’s smiling again. Toward Romy, who’s watching, watching, watching.

It’s okay.

This is what I have.

This is what I chose, even when I had the chance to choose otherwise.

And if one day I want more?

I’m a very good planner.

That hasn’t changed.

***

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BOOKS BY MARY STONE

The Detective’s Wife

A LETTER FROM MARY

Thank you so much for choosing to read The Detective’s Wife. I know how many books are waiting for your attention, and it means more than I can say that you chose to spend your time here. If you would like to keep up to date with all my latest releases, just sign up at the following link. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Every book takes far more people to bring into the world than the name on its cover might suggest, and I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who helped make The Detective’s Wife a reality.

Jennifer, thank you for reaching out, for seeing something special in Jo’s story, and for trusting me to tell it. Your insight, honesty, and fierce commitment pushed me to dig deeper and made this book stronger. I’m grateful for every question you asked, every challenge you set, and every conversation that helped us find the best possible version of this story.

To the entire team at Bookouture, thank you for welcoming me so warmly and for the extraordinary care you’ve given this novel. So many talented people have worked behind the scenes to edit, design, produce, and share The Detective’s Wife with the world. I’m thrilled to be on this journey with each of you.

To my family, thank you for giving me the time, space, encouragement, and occasional reminder to step away from the keyboard. Your belief in me has carried me through more stories, deadlines, and late nights than I could ever count.

To my wonderful team at Mary Stone Publishing, thank you for keeping so many plates spinning while I disappeared into Jo and Hannah’s world. I couldn’t do any of this without you, and I wouldn’t want to.

Finally, to my readers, thank you for coming with me into another unsettling corner of the human mind. Every time you open one of my books, you place your trust in me to take you somewhere worth going. That trust means everything.

With all my love and gratitude,

Mary

PUBLISHING TEAM

Turning a manuscript into a book requires the efforts of many people. The publishing team at Bookouture would like to acknowledge everyone who contributed to this publication.

Audio

Alba Proko

Claire Cowan

Hannah Wilson

Commercial

Hannah Richmond

Imogen Allport

Data and analysis

Mark Alder

Editorial

Jennifer Hunt

Lucy Greenwold

Proofreader

Elaini Caruso

Marketing

Alex Crow

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Cíara Rosney

Martyna Młynarska

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Russell Antcliff

Joe Morris

Kiah Tooke

Production

Hannah Snetsinger

Nadia Michael

Publicity

Noelle Holten

Jess Readett

Sarah Hardy

Rights and Contracts

Richard King

Saidah Graham

Peta Nightingale

Izzy Beaumont

Published by Bookouture in 2026

An imprint of Storyfire Ltd.

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Copyright © Mary Stone, 2026

Mary Stone has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.

eBook ISBN: 978-1-80722-112-6

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.