Rhea Sinclair – New Message
I’ll comply with the test.
I just wanted you to know—that’s not the part I’m afraid of.
I don’t open it. I read the preview and delete the message.
When I go to bed, sleep doesn’t come. Instead, I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling. Unable to escape thoughts of her, ofthem.
Esme, “Yummy, sant!” as she proudly hands me the fabric croissant toy I’d sent.
Rhea, “Our Friday night specialty is frozen pizza. Lucky for you, we always keep a spare in case someone seeks shelter from the rain.”
Rhea: “Oh my God, Spencer… I’ve had the wrong number. I had the last digit as a 7, not a 1.”
Esme, pulling me by the hand to the reading chair, “Books.”
Rhea, voice thick with memory, whispering, “It’s not all on him… It’s just complicated.”
They’re everywhere.
In my mind.
In the air I breathe.
And then, there’s Henri.
A memory—faint but true—flashesthrough my chest like an echo.
"Love doesn’t always come with receipts,"he once told me, slicing bread in that sun-drenched kitchen of his."Sometimes it just shows up. And sometimes, it hides. But worst of all, sometimes, you let it get away before you even realize it was real."
And then that day, looking at Rhea and saying to me, ““Pas étonnant que ton cœur ait été si brisé par son absence.”
No wonder your heart was broken by her absence.
I picture her. Rhea.
Sitting alone in some sterile clinic exam room with Esme in her lap. Filling out paperwork with a clipboard balanced on her knee. Keeping her voice cheerful so Esme doesn’t pick up on the tension. Holding her little hand as a stranger swabs the inside of her cheek like it’s just a routine errand.
The thought makes my stomach turn.
I hate that she put me - us - in this position. I hate that it came to this.
But I hate even more the possibility of meeting my daughter through a chain-of-custody protocol and sterile cotton swabs.
It’s unbearable.
Finally, sometime after 2:00 am, I doze off. But then, an hour later I jolt upright in bed. My heart is racing. The silence in the house feels completely wrong.
No sound. No warning. Just a sharp, gut-deep certainty that something’s not right. I get up. Pace the room.
I try to shake it off, but it lingers, like a pressure system I can’t explain.
Maybe it's straight up guilt or panic. Or maybe it’s something else entirely.
THIRTY-FIVE
RHEA
