I set down the empty bakery bag, my appetite gone. "Millie. How is she? Have you heard anything?"
Eleanor shook her head. "Nothing beyond what's in the news. The hospital isn't releasing details."
"She has a serious concussion. A broken arm. Three broken ribs." The words came out flat, recited. "I looked it up. Children with head injuries need stability."
"And instead she's got a media circus outside her window."
"And no me." My voice cracked. "I promised her, Eleanor. I promised I wouldn't leave."
Eleanor was quiet for a moment, studying my face. "Tell me everything. Start from wherever you need to start."
So I did.
It poured out of me, not just the hearing, but everything. Finding Millie in the rain that first night. The soup. The mansion with its cold marble and colder stepmother. Victoria's subtle cruelties, the way she'd make Millie shrink just by entering a room. The kitchen conversations with Nathaniel, late nights trading griefs like secret currencies.
"He told me about his wife," I said quietly. "His first wife. How she died. The guilt he carries."
"And how did that make you feel?"
I looked at my hands. "Like I understood him. Like we were both just... trying to survive the people we'd lost."
"Claire." Eleanor's voice was gentle. "Sweetheart. Are you in love with him?"
The question landed like a grenade.
"I don't—" I started, then stopped. I tried again. "It's complicated."
"That's not a no."
"It's not a yes either." I pulled my knees to my chest, making myself smaller. "I care about him. I care about Millie so much it scares me. And there were moments, in the kitchen, during Millie's recital, where I thought maybe..."
"Maybe what?"
"Maybe I wasn't just the help to him. Maybe I was something more." The words hurt coming out. "But then the hearing happened, and he sent that text, and now I don't know what any of it meant. Was it real? Or was I just doing what I always do, projecting feelings onto someone unavailable, trying to save a broken family because I couldn't save my own?"
Eleanor reached over and took my hand. "Do you want my honest opinion?"
"I'm terrified of your honest opinion."
"Tough luck." She squeezed my fingers. "Here it is: I think you fell in love with that man somewhere between all theVictoria mess and your kitchen counter moments. I think you love his daughter like she's your own. And I think you're sitting here torturing yourself because you're convinced you don't deserve any of it."
My eyes burned. "The lawyer said?—"
"The lawyer said what she was paid to say." Eleanor's voice hardened. "She took your therapy records, the sign of a healing person, and twisted them into something ugly. But Claire, having anxious attachment doesn't mean your feelings aren't real. Working on yourself doesn't make you broken. It makes you brave."
"I don't feel brave. I feel like I'm falling apart."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive."
A sobbing laugh escaped me. "When did you get so wise?"
"I've always been wise. You were just too busy taking care of everyone else to notice." She shifted to face me fully. "Here's what I know: you can sit in this apartment and hide. You can take that man's money and disappear, just like Victoria wants. Or you can decide that you're done letting other people write your story."
"What does that even mean?"
"It means you have a choice, Claire. You can be the woman from those headlines, the victim, the gold-digger, the unstable mess, or you can be the woman who walks into that hospital with her head high and shows that little girl she didn't break her promise."
"And if Victoria's there? If the cameras are there?"
