“She hugged me,” I whispered.
Kane’s gaze shifted to me then.
“She trusted me.”
“You didn’t break that trust,” he said evenly.
“She’s gone.”
His hand covered mine.
“She’s not gone,” he corrected.
The distinction mattered.
Because gone meant permanent. Gone meant the kind of loss that didn’t reverse itself. Gone meant funerals and paperwork and learning how to live around an absence.
Sabine wasn’t gone.
She was somewhere.
The rain intensified, slamming against the windshield so hard the wipers struggled to keep up. The city blurred into streaks of gray and silver. We were moving fast, but it didn’t feel fast enough.
My parents didn’t even know she existed.
The thought landed with a strange, almost unbearable weight.
Charles and Susan Rousseau—careful, composed, predictably cautious Charles and Susan—had a granddaughter.
Five years old.
Dark hair. Rose’s eyes.
And they didn’t know.
If something happened to Sabine—if this spiraled into something irreversible—my parents would never even understand what they’d lost.
My mother would keep setting a place for Rose in her mind, not knowing there had once been a smaller chair at thetable she should have pulled out. My father would continue talking about legacy and lineage and the importance of family continuity without realizing it had already branched without his permission.
They had a granddaughter.
And they might never meet her.
My throat tightened painfully.
My parents could be suffocating in their carefulness. In their need for order. For appearances. For making sure everything aligned with the version of life they believed was correct.
Dad especially.
He had cut off his extended family here in France years ago—some old argument he refused to share with us. He’d decided that distance was cleaner. Safer. That certain branches of the family tree were better left unwatered.
And because he was decisive and confident and convinced he was right, we had followed.
No cousins in France. No messy reunions. No complicated connections.
Just us.
Controlled.
