blanket too thin to keep out the cold entirely,

cold and unmoving, and every time she woke she remembere

pt through Mia's thin curtains, El

riend in the next room, and reached for her pho

from her mother, s

old bridge. Nine o'clock. Pl

mother's comfort and the bitter memory of Margaret's silence the night before, the

despite everything - the simple, stubborn hope that her mother might still choose h

a note of thanks for Mia on the kitchen table, and set

*

kind of place Elena and her mother had visited occasionally when she was younger, before Victoria a

ped tightly around a cup of tea she didn't appear to be drinkin

her voice as Elena slid into the chair ac

exhaustion and hurt blending together into something she couldn't q

d, though she di

d across the table, hesitant, and Elena allowed her mother's hand to close over hers, cold fingers trembling slightly against her own.

caught. "And? W

sages closely himself, that he'd only glimpsed what Victoria wanted him to see before she pulled the phon

t before, Elena felt something loosen slightly in her chest

d that?

part of him already suspects he moved too quickly last night. H

walking back through that front door and finally being heard properl

ain and again, made the hope feel fragile, breakable, the kind of thing

ena asked carefully. "Last

cing down at their joine

ng the phone away again. Why did she never let anyone else examine them properly? He

ther, the first in longer than she could remember. "Thank you fo

forts to hold them back. "I've spent so many years trying to keep the peace in that house, trying to avoid conflict with your fath

her own voice for a long moment, the emotion of the past twe

I need more than a conversation in a study late at night. I need him to actually say

to see you this morning, before anything else happens. I wanted you to know the ground might be shifting, even if it

walk back through that door with her mother beside her and finally fo

ering how quickly the previous evening had turned, how easily

for an hour. I need to prepare myself pr

ent flickered briefly across her fa

updates - how Richard had barely slept, how he'd left for the office early that morn

ound beneath her family had genuinely begun to shift, or whether her mother's ho

*

re Elena arrived, insisting she wanted to smooth the path as mu

nger, turning her mother's words over in her

guilty confession this morning, and allowed herself, cautiously, to belie

uzzed again

ely - Mia, checking in, asking whether s

y later, and was about to slip the phone back into her pocket when a second m

, opening i

ictoria's planning, it's already in motion, an

g it twice, torn between dismissing it as some cruel prank

othing but a warning vague enough to mean almost anythin

ck quickly.

and, the café's quiet morning bustle continuing obliviously around her, unt

followed made h

hey're planning to do to you today. If you walk into that house believing your fa

looked up instinctively, scanning the café around her, half-convinced whoev

dinary people, going about ordinary mornings, ut

her way back to the house, already pre

posedly wavering, supposedl

composing a message to a friend willing to help her ar

t, dread coiling tighter in her stomach with every passing second, knowing w