Chapter 1: The Bracelet in the Grass
Maren Vale had spent three years learning how to live with the fact that another woman was raising her daughter.
When she returned to the Mercer estate during a lavish coastal wedding, she did not expect four-year-old Elodie to remember her.
She certainly did not expect the little girl to be so careful around every adult that even a spilled glass of water made her whisper, "I'm sorry," despite having done nothing wrong.
That was the first thing that frightened Maren.
The second was hearing Elodie explain why.
"Mommy gets sad when things go wrong, so I try not to make things go wrong."
Mommy.
Elodie was not talking about Maren.
She meant Celestine, the beautiful blonde woman who had raised her for most of the life she could remember, who knew how to fix her hair, which shoes hurt her feet, what story she wanted when she was sick, and how to make motherhood look effortless in front of an entire room.
Maren had imagined hating that woman.
What she had never prepared herself for was seeing genuine tenderness between Celestine and the child she had lost.
Then Maren noticed the bracelet around Elodie's wrist.
Three days earlier, someone had anonymously sent her a photograph taken inside Elodie's bedroom.
The child had been asleep, completely unaware that someone stood close enough to photograph the same wrist.
Maren had crossed half the country because of that picture.
She did not demand her daughter back.
She asked only one thing.
"Celestine, please.
Let me see her wrist."
For the first time all afternoon, Celestine looked afraid.
She took Elodie by the hand and hurried away from the wedding, down the old path leading toward the coastal cliffs.
A few seconds later, Maren found Elodie's flower-girl bracelet lying in the grass.
There was bl00d on the inside.
The same kind of mark Maren had been told years ago existed only in her imagination.
She closed her hand around the bracelet and followed them toward the cliffs, already knowing one terrible thing:
Whatever had forced her out of her daughter's life three years ago had started again.
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What is Celestine hiding — and what really happened to Elodie three years ago?
Comment **"NEXT"** if you want Part 2.
