She was quiet for so long I thought she might not answer. Then she took a breath.
“I’ve spent my entire adult life paying for someone else’s sins.” She paused, “My father was a drunk and a gambler, and when he died, his debts didn’t die with him. Men showed up saying I owed them money, and when I said that wasn’t how it worked, they threatened my brother. So I paid. Then they decided I owed more.” I thought about Sarah showing up toLily’s sessions exhausted, about her working at that restaurant late into the night, about the worn edges of her clothes that I’d noticed but never questioned.
Her hand trembled slightly in mine.
“They came to remind me of the debt that night, they knew I worked for you and threatened me using Lily. That’s when you found me.”
My blood went cold. “They threatened my daughter?”
Rage built in my chest, cold and controlled, but it wasn’t directed at her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked quietly, but she flinched, she pulled her hand from mine, and the loss of contact felt like a hit. Her eyes shone with guilt.
“I was scared. I’m sorry for risking working with Lily when I knew those men were after me. I was just scared that you’d fire me,”
Something protective surged through me, primal and absolute. Those men had hurt her, had terrorized her for years. I would make sure they never touched her again.
“You’re not alone anymore,” I said. “You don’t have to carry all of this by yourself.”
She looked at me, surprise flickering in her eyes, “You’re not angry?”
“I am, but not at you.” I sighed, “I’m not angry with you Sarah. They hurt you.” I stared at her face, even though the scar was gone, my heart still ached for what she shouldered. All alone. All because she was too afraid to ask for help.
We sat there in the quiet. She smiled softly, and I let myself pretend—just for a moment—that maybe tomorrow didn’t have to change everything.
CHAPTER 14
Sarah
The apartment smelledlike fresh paint and someone else’s life. Boxes stacked against walls that weren’t mine, secondhand furniture that didn’t quite fit the space, windows that looked out at a view I didn’t recognize yet.
“This is cozy,” Delia said—her polite way of calling the place a shoebox. She set down another box and looked around with forced optimism. “Very… intimate.”
“You can say it’s tiny. I won’t be offended.”
“Fine, it’s very tiny.” She walked to the window that overlooked a brick wall. “And the view is very… urban.”
“That’s a nice way of saying I can see directly into my neighbor’s kitchen.”
“Look at it this way—free cooking show every night.”
I laughed despite myself and started unpacking dishes. Leaving Hector’s penthouse had been harder than I expected, and not just because I was trading marble floors and city views for cracked linoleum and a radiator that clanked like it was trying to communicate in Morse code.
But because Lily had cried, tears streaming down her face while she’d asked why I had to go.
She’d been texting me pictures since I left this morning, each one a variation of her sad face with increasingly dramatic captions. “The house is too quiet.” “I miss you already.” “Why do you live so far away?”
It wasn’t far. Thirty minutes on the subway. But to an eight-year-old who’d just gotten her voice back and was using it to guilt trip me, it might as well have been another country.
I’d knelt down and taken her small hands in mine, trying to explain that sometimes people needed their own space. That this didn’t mean our sessions were ending, that I’d still see her three times a week.
“But why can’t you just stay forever?” Her voice had been so small, so genuinely confused. “We have lots of rooms. You could have any one you want.”
“I know, sweetheart. But I need to have my own place. Somewhere that’s just mine.”
“But I want you to stay.”
That had nearly broken me. I’d pulled her into a hug and promised her over and over that I wasn’t leaving her, just moving to a different building. That I’d still be there for all our sessions.
