Then there’s the Hunt. Colton. The promise he made to come back for me.
I want to believe him, but I don’t know if I can believe anything anymore.
My head aches, my heart aches, my everything aches.
I don’t move until the sun goes down, and even then, I only move because I have no other choice.
I have to survive. I have to find out the rest. I have to prove that I’m not just the product of someone else’s decisions.
Finally, I try power my laptop on.
It’s dead.
Of course it is.
I fish the charger from under a pile of books and plug it in. The battery light blinks, red then orange, and sit on the carpet and wait. The cold seeps up through my knees.
Eventually waiting get’s boring and my body begs to move, so I stand and stretch.
Then I pace. It’s barely big enough for a bed and a desk and two steps in either direction, but I manage to turn it into a track, lapping from wall to wall, back and forth until the rhythm is the only thing that keeps my bones from rattling apart.
In the window I catch my reflection—ghostly, doubled by the glass, my face hollowed out by the light outside.
“Why didn’t she tell me?” I whisper, to the reflection or the wall or the dead laptop. My voice sounds wrong in the air.
I run my hands over my hair, try to braid it, fail. They’re shaking again.
“How did they find us?” I ask, louder, like the answer is hiding in the drywall.
The laptop coughs itself awake. I pounce, sitting down and jabbing the power button until the screen blooms alive. The password box comes up, and my hands hesitate.
It’s the same password I’ve always used: Mom’s birthday, backwards.
I type it in. The computer opens with a mechanical chime.
I start with the obvious.
“Kent Harrington billionaire,” I type, fingers flying. The search results fill the screen instantly. Every article, every interview, every press release since the dawn of the internet is here. His face is everywhere, always a suit, always a smile that hides the death in his eyes. There are pictures of him with presidents, with kings, with supermodels. There’s a video at the top of the feed, him accepting some prize in Switzerland, thanking the crowd in three different languages. He knows how to perform.
Next: “Eliza Allen Harrington.”
The first results are nothing. Then, an obituary. My throat closes.
“ELIZA ALLEN, 43, of suburban Denver, died in a boating accident Saturday. Beloved wife of Kent Harrington, survived by daughter Evelyn. Services private. Memorial donations to be made to charity of choice.”
A chill crawls through me. There’s no mention of a body, no details, nothing but the line about a daughter named Evelyn. That’s not my name.
I’m Eve.
Right?
Below the obituary, a link to an archived news site. A society column, dated twenty-seven years ago.
I click.
The text is old, barely readable, but the words are unmistakable: “Yesterday, tech whiz Kent Harrington wed research assistant Eliza Allen in a private ceremony at the Harrington Hall. The bride wore a classic A-line gown and carried white tulips. The groom’s family was in attendance. The couple will honeymoon in Geneva before returning to San Francisco.”
There’s a photo attached. It’s black-and-white, grainy, but I see my mother instantly. She’s so young. She’s smiling, but the smile is the one I remember from the end, the one that says, “I’m trying” instead of “I’m happy.” Her eyes are wide and luminous, and even through the screen I can see the fear in them.
