Chapter 2: The Name on the Screen
Part 2 ⬇️
I turned around slowly.
Ethan was standing with his hands at his sides, his face doing something I had never seen it do before.
Not guilt, exactly.
Something closer to calculation.
Like he was already deciding what to say.
"Claire—"
"Don't." My voice came out quieter than I expected.
"Don't say my name like that."
"Let me explain."
"She's been here for four months." I looked at Gemma, then back at him.
"Four months, Ethan.
I buried her in my head.
I sat by that river.
I stopped eating.
I—"
"She wasn't safe." He said it fast, like he'd rehearsed it.
"I was protecting her."
"From what?
From me?"
He didn't answer.
That silence hit harder than anything he could have said.
Gemma's hand tightened around mine.
I looked down at her.
She was watching him with an expression no eight-year-old should have — careful, waiting, like she already knew what adults were capable of.
"Mommy," she said softly.
"He told me you couldn't come."
I felt the room tilt.
"What did you say?"
Ethan took one step forward.
"That's not what I—"
Then his phone lit up on the bedside table.
The name on the screen stopped me cold.
It wasn't Patrick.
---
What Claire saw on that screen changes everything.
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