And no matter what I decide, Mary wins.
Chapter 9
The grandfather clock in the hallway chimes the quarter hour—eleven forty-seven. Time slipping away. The guest room feels both suffocating and too large, its perfection another reminder of the world I don’t belong in. Moonlight streams through frost-rimmed windows, casting the mahogany writing desk in silver and shadow. I smooth out a cream-colored card I found in the desk drawer. It’s thick, expensive paper watermarked with the Brown family crest. The perfect canvas for destroying my own happiness.
My fingers tremble as I uncork the black fountain pen. Of course the Browns wouldn’t have anything so common as a ballpoint.
How do you end a relationship in a single note? How do you compress love and regret and lies into words that won’t reveal the manipulation behind them? The blank card stares back at me, accusatory in its emptiness.
I press the nib to paper, watching ink bloom like a bruise.
“Cillian,” I write, my normally fluid handwriting tight and controlled. “I’m sorry, but the pressure from your family is toomuch for me. We’re too different, and I can’t bear to watch you suffer. Please forgive me.”
I fold the card once, precisely, the crease sharp under my thumbnail. Is this what love is sometimes? Sacrifice disguised as surrender?
The rideshare is confirmed for midnight. Thirteen minutes to slip away unnoticed. Thirteen minutes to end one life and begin another.
The hallway is dim when I slip out, card clutched between my fingers. Cillian and Arthur are still in the study. Three doors down.
Voices drift from beneath the study door as I slide the note in front of it. Cillian’s low tones and Arthur’s gravelly response. I pause, drawn by the sound of him so close, just on the other side of wood and propriety. But I love him too much to stay. So with that, I release the note and stand at my full height. Cillian will see it when he enters the hall.
The heavy front door opens with surprising quietness for its size. Winter air rushes in, sharp with ice and emptiness. Snowflakes dance in the porch light, covering the driveway in fresh white that will record my escape in footprints soon erased by more falling snow.
I step out into the cold night, boots crunching through fresh drifts as I flee toward the waiting rideshare. Each step carries me farther from Cillian, from what might have been, from the warmth we created together.
But the children will have their program. Their healing won’t be interrupted by Mary’s vindictiveness. Their art will continue to be a lifeline through pain I can barely imagine.
That has to be enough. It has to be worth this frozen hollowness spreading through my chest, this knowledge that I’m leaving behind the best part of myself in a house built on control and fear.
I don’t look back at the house. I can’t bear to see the windows watching me go, to wonder if Mary stands behind one of them, savoring her victory. Instead, I focus on the waiting car, on the escape it promises, on surviving the sacrifice I never wanted to make.
Chapter 10
Cillian
The conversation with my father drags until midnight, financial minutiae and legal jargon blurring together. I check my watch for the fifth time in as many minutes, thinking only of Star waiting. When my father finally closes his leather portfolio with a soft snap, relief washes through me.
“We’ll continue tomorrow,” he says, not meeting my eyes. Something in his tone catches—hesitation, perhaps regret—but I’m already halfway to the door, thoughts racing ahead to Star’s warm smile, to apologizing for this disastrous evening, to promising that tomorrow we’ll leave this mausoleum of family expectations behind.
That’s when I see it. The cream-colored card propped against the baseboard in the hallway. My heart stops, then races double-time to compensate. Star’s handwriting. I’d know it anywhere, those artist’s loops and precise angles. My fingers feel numb as I pick up the card, the paper unexpectedly heavy in my hand.
Cillian, I’m sorry, but the pressure from your family is too much for me. We’re too different, and I can’t bear to watch you suffer. Please forgive me.
I read it again. Again. A fourth time. My breath comes shallow now, the room spinning slightly at its edges.
This isn’t right. This isn’t Star.
I know her handwriting, yes, but these aren’t her words. Star doesn’t run. Star doesn’t surrender. She stood in my mother’s dining room wearing defiant red, fifteen feet of mahogany between us, and never once looked away first. She challenged the entire fortress of Brown family tradition without raising her voice. This note is not her voice nor her heart.
“Star?” I call her name into the emptiness, knowing already she won’t answer. I pull out my phone, call her number. It rings until voicemail picks up. I try again. Again. Nothing.
“What did you do?” I whisper to the empty hall, but I already know. I’ve always known, somewhere beneath conscious thought, what my mother is capable of. I just never believed she’d go this far.
I find her in the parlor, perched on the edge of the leather wingback. She’s still in her emerald silk, not a wrinkle, not a hair out of place despite the late hour. The crystal decanter beside her catches firelight, amber liquid sloshing gently as she pours herself a precise two fingers of scotch.
She isn’t surprised to see me. She’s been waiting.
“She’s gone, isn’t she?” I say, the note crushed in my fist.
