Ethan sat beside her at the kitchen table, his hands wrapped around a cup of coffee that had long gone cold. His eyes were dark with fatigue, but there was a light of determination in them—something that hadn’t been there before. It was like he was finally waking from a nightmare that had lasted seven years, a nightmare that had almost broken him.
“I can’t stop thinking about what Denise said,” Ethan finally spoke, his voice hoarse. “She didn’t know. At least not in the beginning. But when she did… she didn’t tell us.”
Claire nodded slowly. She had been thinking the same thing. Denise had been a part of it—unknowingly at first, but then she’d made the decision to keep silent, to protect her new life with the girls instead of doing the right thing.
“I don’t know how she could have lived with that,” Claire said softly, her fingers drumming lightly on the table. “To know and not tell us… It feels like another betrayal on top of everything else.”
Ethan didn’t answer right away. His eyes were fixed on the mug in front of him, as if searching for some kind of comfort in the quiet morning. The house around them was still, almost eerily so. It was like the world had paused, waiting for them to find a way to move forward.
But even as they sat there, the past loomed over them. Claire could still hear the faint echoes of Margaret’s voice, the cold words she had spoken when Claire confronted her. She could still see Denise’s face, her eyes filled with guilt and regret, but Claire knew that those emotions couldn’t undo the damage. They couldn’t undo the years lost or the pain that had been inflicted.
“What do we do now?” Ethan asked quietly, his eyes lifting to meet Claire’s. “How do we fix this?”
Claire sat up straighter, her mind working through the question, piece by piece. She wasn’t sure there was an easy answer, but she knew one thing for certain: the girls needed them. They needed Claire and Ethan to be strong, to help them understand what had happened and to make sure they were never taken from them again.
